Eureka Rolls Past Greenville, Into SLIAC Tourney Semifinals, 89-71
EUREKA – For the fourth time in the past six years, the Eureka men's basketball team is headed back to the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament semifinals.
The Red Devils extended their winning streak to seven on Wednesday, rolling past Greenville with an 89-71 SLIAC Tournament-quarterfinal victory at Christine Bonati Bollwinkle Arena and Convocation Center.
Eureka led by as many as 32 in the second half, and it held the highest scoring team in Division III to 31.5 percent shooting from the field, 17.2 percent from 3-point range and the least amount of points it scored all year.
The third-seeded Red Devils (12-14) will next take on second-seeded Fontbonne (14-11) in the SLIAC semifinals at Webster on Friday at 5:30 p.m.
"We feel really good," said Eureka leading scorer Cody Baer (Peoria, Ill./Dunlap/Southwestern Illinois). "I feel like our chemistry is just coming together at the right time. We lost some tough ones last month, but we're clicking now. We got seven in a row, and we're looking for more."
Eureka had four players reach double figures on Tuesday and saw three record double-doubles.
Peewee Brown (Peoria, Ill./Manual/Lincoln) posted a game-high 26 points and 10 rebounds while shooting 9-for-16 from the field. It was his third double-double of the season.
Baer notched his 12th double-double of the season with 20 points and 11 rebounds on 10-of-16 shooting. His partner in the post, Logan Dorethy (Hamilton, Ill./West Hancock/MacMurray) racked up 19 points and nine rebounds.
Noah Persich (Peoria, Ill./Metamora/Parkland) put up 12 points and gathered 10 rebounds for his first double-double as a Red Devil. Fellow guard Austyn Ellison (Hudson, Ill./Bloomington Central Catholic) made 4-of-6 shots and finished with eight points, a team-high five assists and five rebounds.
Andrew Gonzalez (Mundelein, Ill./Mundelein) contributed six rebounds.
The Red Devils were dominant on the glass, grabbing 57 boards to Greenville's 40. The home team also shot nearly 53 percent from the field, improving from 50 percent in the first half to 57 percent in the second half.
It was a big difference from when the Red Devils fell to the Panthers on the road, 124-116, on Jan. 28.
"We were taking too many quick shots," Brown said of the last meeting. "This game, we learned not to take too quick of shots so they couldn't get in transition."
Greenville played far more half-court offense than it had in the previous meetings with the Red Devils, but it struggled mightily in the first half, going 9-for-45 from the field and 0-for-13 from distance.
The Red Devils started an 18-0 run less than five minutes into the game. An Ellison layup off a feed from Persich made it 26-7 with 10:46 left in the first half and prompted a Greenville timeout.
Then, Eureka held the visitors scoreless for the last five minutes of the half, scoring 16 unanswered to take a 49-20 lead into halftime.
The Panthers' shooting improved and their defensive intensity increased in the second half, but between Eureka's stingy man-to-man defense and resolve to stick to the game plan, the Red Devils left no chance of a comeback.
Greenville's Jarred Johnson scored a team-high 18 points on 8-of-16 shooting, while Keishun Thomas and Carlos Crespo added nine and eight points, respectively.
In the win, Baer moved to second in program history in rebounds in a single season with 279, passing Chris Eaton's mark of 275 set in the 1992-93 season. He also moved into a tie for seventh in blocks in a single season with 33, surpassing Michael Zasada and A.J. Richard's shared mark of 32.
"It's been great," Baer said of his first year as a Red Devil. "I'm just happy to be here, happy to be a part of it, and I'm just trying to see how far we can take this thing."
