Red Devils Prevail in Overtime Against Fontbonne, 84-75
EUREKA – The Eureka men's basketball team seized its fourth straight St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win in dramatic fashion on Saturday.
The Red Devils prevailed in an 84-75 overtime victory against Fontbonne at Christine Bonati Bollwinkle Arena and Convocation Center.
The win moved the Red Devils to 7-5 in league play – and snapped a three-game losing streak against the Griffins going back to last season. With two games left to play in the regular season, fourth-place Eureka is now just one game behind the Griffins, who are tied for second place with Webster.
"We wanted to get that Fontbonne win back, since last year we went 0-2 against them," said Eureka senior big man Logan Dorethy (Hamilton, Ill./West Hancock/Hannibal-LaGrange). "It's a really big win for us."
Dorethy racked up a game-high 21 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the field and 5-of-9 shooting from the free-throw line. He also gathered five rebounds.
Peewee Brown (Peoria, Ill./Manual/Lincoln) and Austyn Ellison (Hudson, Ill./Bloomington Central Catholic) both had 16 points. Brown grabbed six rebounds and had three steals, while Ellison distributed a team-high five assists and four rebounds.
Cody Baer (Peoria, Ill./Dunlap/Southwestern Illinois) posted his 13th double-double of the season, tallying 14 points and 20 rebounds. It was his third 20-rebound game of the season and his sixth time grabbing 15 boards or more.
Noah Persich (Peoria, Ill./Metamora/Parkland) also had 14 points, along with three steals.
Ben Carter (Morton, Ill./Morton) and Andrew Gonzalez (Mundelein, Ill./Mundelein) provided good minutes off the bench, with former contributing three boards, two assists and a point and the latter providing solid defense in the post, getting a rebound and an assist and making a pair of free throws at the very end to cap it off.
Everybody played a role in coming away with this one.
The lead changed hands four times in the last four minutes of regulation.
A pair of free throws by Brown with 18 seconds remaining gave Eureka a two-point edge, but Fontbonne's Caden Clark stormed down the court and split the defense with a game-tying layup with 12.8 seconds left. He got fouled and missed the and-one attempt, leaving the game tied at 70-70.
Baer came down with the rebound, and Eureka called timeout with 6.5 seconds left to set up a play. The Red Devils ended up in-bounding to Ellison, who put up a baseline jumper that hit the rim twice and the backboard once before refusing to go in, sending the game to overtime.
Eureka took control in overtime with stingy defense and efficient offense.
The Red Devils scored the first five points of OT. Brown hit a baseline jumper on EC's first possession, Baer drew a foul and made 1 of 2 free throws and a dish from Ellison to Dorethy on a cut to the basket made it 75-70 with just three minutes to play.
When Fontbonne finally scored, Ellison drilled a corner 3 to extend the lead to six.
A bucket by Fontbonne's Jaden Betton made it a four-point game with 2:05 remaining.
It stayed that way for a couple of possessions, changing after Persich tied up Betton for a jump-ball steal, Dorethy got fouled on the other end and made 1 of 2 to make it 79-74 with 1:13 remaining.
Persich, Brown and Gonzalez combined to go 5-of 6 at the line in the final minute to sew it up. By the time the overtime period was over, the Red Devils had held the Griffins to 2-of-11 shooting from the field.
"I feel like we just stayed with the same intensity and energy," Brown said after the game. "We just stuck with it, kept our head in the game, stayed focused – everybody made mistakes, but we just kept going."3
In the first half, Eureka used a 12-0 run to take a 14-point lead over the Griffins with 4:17 until halftime.
The home team led by 10 at the break and stretched it out to 14 again with a three-point play by Brown less than six minute into the second half.
After that, the Griffins chipped away until they took their first lead of the second half with an emphatic dunk by Cheikh Thiam with 3:16 left. That set up the back-and-forth conclusion to regulation.
"When we got up, we knew they were going to fight back, because that's the type of team they are," Dorethy said, "but we persevered."
Thiam scored a team-high 20 points and gathered eight boards for the Griffins. Clark and Brent Wagner notched 12 and 11 points, respectively.
Eureka shot 41.5 percent from the field on the day, just edging Fontbonne's 39 percent. The Red Devils also made 4 of 8 3-point attempts and put away 81.3 percent of their 32 foul shots.
On Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., Eureka (9-14, 7-5 SLIAC) will host SLIAC leader Principia (17-6, 9-3 SLIAC) in a senior-night showdown at Christine Bonati Bollwinkle Arena and Convocation Center. The SLIAC Tournament is just around the corner.
"Right now, we're playing the best basketball that we've been playing all year going into the tournament," Dorethy said. "I think we have a good shot at making a run."
