Eureka Rolls Past Monmouth for Third Straight Win, 94-68
EUREKA – The Eureka men's basketball team kept its foot on the gas in the second half and rolled past Monmouth, 94-68, for the team's third straight win on Tuesday.
It was the Red Devils' largest margin victory over the Fighting Scots in program history.
For the first time this season, the Red Devils (3-2) have a winning record after an impressive night in which the team shot 60.6 percent from the floor and had five players reach double figures. It was the kind of game where everybody got involved in the act.
Logan Dorethy (Hamilton, Ill./West Hancock) tallied a season-high 18 points – all coming in the second half – on 9-of-13 shooting and was one rebound shy of a double-double. Six of the nine boards he gathered came on the offensive end.
Ian Milsteadt (East Peoria, Ill./East Peoria) also notched 18 points while shooting 7-for-13 from the field and collecting four rebounds. J'Len Crawford (Bloomington, Ill./Bloomington) was an efficient 6-of-8 from the field and finished with 14 points, three assists, three rebounds and a pair of steals.
Charlie McKinty (Elmwood, Ill./Elmwood) added 13 points and used his long arms to snatch a team-high five steals while dishing four assists. Jordan Brooks (St. Joseph, Ill./St. Joseph-Ogden) contributed 12 points, with 10 coming in a first half in which he knocked down two 3-pointers and went 4-for-6 from the field.
Junior guard Austyn Ellison (Hudson, Ill./Bloomington Central Catholic) came off the bench and distributed a team-high six assists and added eight points and three assists in 19 minutes.
Senior point guard Jalen Hosea (Peoria, Ill./Richwoods) notched five assists and sophomore guard Blake Castonguay (Watseka, Ill./Watseka) added six points and a steal.
Sophomore big man Lane Thompson (Dwight, Ill./Dwight) was also productive off the bench, recording four points and four rebounds in 11 minutes.
Eureka had the upper hand from near the get-go, but the Red Devils really started pressing their advantage near the end of the first half when the team went up by 17 points. By halftime, Eureka was already shooting 60.7 percent and held a 44-27 lead.
The home team came out of halftime and ran a beautiful play in which the team worked the ball around the right side of the perimeter with six passes before Dorethy finished off a feed from underneath by Brooks. That started a 9-2 run to kick off the half.
Monmouth made a couple of small runs and breached the 15-point barrier with 12 1/2 minutes to play. The visitors didn't get that close the rest of the way,though. The Red Devils closed strong and led by as many as 29 in the final two minutes.
Jordan Metcalf tallied a game-high 19 points on 9-of-13 shooting for the Fighting Scots. Kendall Brasfield followed with 17 and Jonathan Oradiegwu had 13.
The Fighting Scots bested Eureka in rebounds, 39-31, but the Red Devils had the clear advantage in nearly everything else, shooting 41.2 percent from distance and 70 percent from the free-throw line, racking up a season-high 24 assists to Monmouth's 10 and only turning the ball over 10 times to Monmouth's 19.
The Red Devils scored 29 points off turnovers, posted 56 points in the paint and received 35 points from its bench.
On Saturday, Eureka (3-2) will next take on Grinnell (3-3) on the road in what's sure to be a fast-paced, high-scoring affair at 4 p.m.
