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12.06.08
- Down 19 with seven minutes left in the contest, the Foresters mounted a
furious comeback to pull within two of Grace College at 94-92 with
22 seconds remaining, but the Lancers drained four consecutive free
throws to seal HU's fate.
Grace came out hitting on all
cylinders. Eric Gaff opened the scoring with a layup to give
the Lancers a 2-0 lead and they never gave it up. Grace missed
just seven shots in the entire first half to put the Foresters down
double digits early. The Lancers finished the half shooting a
sizzling 75.9% and took a 53-39 advantage to the locker room.
Grace continued
to have the hot hand to begin the second period hitting five of its
first seven shots to push the lead to 17 through three minutes of
play. HU netted four consecutive points to cut it to 13, but
the Lancers answered with an 8-0 run to take their largest lead of
the game at 71-50 with 13:44 on the clock. Six minutes later,
Grace was still up 19 at 86-67 when a Tyler Shively trey ignited an
11-2 Forester run to cut the deficit to 10 at 88-78 at the 5:44
mark.
HU didn't make a
lot more headway over the next five minutes and were still down nine
after Grace's Michael Wienhorst hit two charity
tosses with
41 seconds left. On the Foresters' next possession, Kyle Benge
scored on a driving layup to cut it to seven and when Kyle Plumlee
missed two free throws, Andrew Mock drained a three with 24 ticks
left to make it 94-90. An offensive foul on Jacob Peattie gave
the ball back to HU and Benge took it to the hole again to make it
94-92. The Foresters quickly fouled Plumlee, but this time he
knocked down both tries at the line. HU got off three shot
attempts on its next possession, but couldn't connect and had to
foul again. Gaff put the game out of reach with his two free
throws.
Benge took
game-high honors and set a new career high with 31 points in the
contest for HU. Kevin Kyle and Kellen Zawadzki both added 14
points and Mock finished with 13. Wienhorst topped four double
digit scorers for the Lancers with 25 points. Gaff chipped in
a double-double with 23 points and a game-high 14 rebounds.
David Swanson had 18 and Derek Johnson added 11 off the bench.
Grace finished
the game shooting 35-51 from the field for 69% while the Foresters
went 32-74 for 43%. The Lancers also out-rebounded HU 35-26.
Box Score
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