Eureka Falls at Fontbonne, 79-69
ST. LOUIS, Mo. – The Eureka men's basketball team dropped a 79-69 St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference matchup at Fontbonne on Saturday.
Eureka's Cody Baer (Peoria, Ill./Dunlap/Southwestern Illinois) recorded a double-double with a team-high 21 points and 11 rebounds in his return from injury. The junior big man shot 8-for-15 from the field and 5-for-6 from the free-throw line and also contributed two blocks and a steal in the loss.
Recent transfer Peewee Brown (Peoria, Ill./Manual/Lincoln) also had 21 points, with 10 of them coming at the free-throw line. He gathered six boards and registered a team-high four steals.
Senior guard Austyn Ellison (Hudson, Ill./Bloomington Central Catholic) followed with 18 points on 6-for-17 shooting from the field, including a pair of 3-pointers, while senior big man Logan Dorethy (Hamilton, Ill./West Hancock/Hannibal LaGrange) pulled down 10 boards to go with two assists and a block.
The Red Devils were right there with the Griffins for a decent portion of the afternoon. In the first half, the home team's largest lead was eight points. When Elijah Rice scored a layup on a third-chance opportunity to make it 20-12 with less than nine minutes left in the first half, Ellison and Ben Carter (Morton, Ill./Morton) hit back-to-back 3s to cut the lead to two.
A pair of free throws by Dorethy soon gave Eureka a 21-20 advantage with 6:39 left. That ended up being the Red Devils' last lead. The Griffins responded, regained the lead and held a three-point advantage heading into halftime.
It was close early in the second half. A jumper by Ellison made it a one-point game a little more than 2 1/2 minutes in, but then Fontbonne went on a 10-0 run to put EC on its back foot with its first double-digit deficit of the game.The lead would swell to 19 with less than nine minutes to play before the Red Devils would start to chip away.
A triple of Brown brought the visitors within 13 with 5 1/2 minutes to play. After a 30-second timeout, a forced Eureka turnover and a layup by Baer made it an 11-point game. The Red Devils kept gunning, but the Griffins managed to keep pace on the other end.
A jumper by Ellison finally made it a single-digit game with less than two minutes left. A steal and bucket by Brown made it an eight-point game. A putback layup by Baer brought Eureka within six with 50 seconds left.
There just wasn't enough time. Eureka was forced to foul to stop the clock, and the Griffins proceeded to go 6-for-6 from the line to sew it up.
Clark finished with a team-high 19 points, scoring 15 in the second half while making 11-of-13 at the line. Brent Wagner made 3 of 7 from distance and followed with 17 points. Cheikh Thiam posted a double-double of 16 rebounds and 14 points.
Eureka (5-12, 3-3 SLIAC) will next take on Principia (12-5, 4-2 SLIAC) on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.