by Russell Vannozzi | Mar 20, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
DAVIDSON, N.C. – Any thought that the Lipscomb men’s basketball team wouldn’t be interested in the NIT was dispelled Tuesday night at John M. Belk Arena. Despite trailing for 27 of the 40 minutes, Lipscomb pulled off a late comeback for an 89-81 victory over Davidson in the first round of the NIT. The Bisons will travel to UNCG for the second round at a to-be-determined date and time. “We have a lot of old, experienced guys, and it hasn’t shown necessarily in the previous games,” Lipscomb junior guard Michael Buckland said. “You could tell that a lot of us didn’t want that game to not finish in our favor. So yeah, just a lot of resolve from our guys – a lot of experience showed tonight.” Senior forward Eli Pepper hit a dagger three in the corner with 34 seconds left, but it was Buckland who stole the show in the final minutes. Buckland, a native of nearby High Point, North Carolina, swished a three with 5:12 remaining to give Lipscomb a 74-71 lead, which the Bisons never relinquished. He followed that with eight more points down the stretch to finish with a team-high 19 points, including four makes from long range. “[Buckland] shot it great and made timely baskets,” Lipscomb coach Casey Alexander said. “He doesn’t get any notoriety for what he does defensively. But [Davidson’s] two guards are as good as any we’ve played all season long. And he guarded those guys all night.” Davidson recruited Buckland during his time at Wesleyan Christian Academy, but the Wildcats never extended an offer. In front of plenty of family...
by Russell Vannozzi | Mar 19, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
It didn’t take long for the Lipscomb men’s basketball team to get over the disappointment of being snubbed from the NCAA tournament. Following the NCAA and NIT selection shows, the Bisons held practice late Sunday night to prepare for their Tuesday-evening battle at Davidson. The first round NIT game is set for 6 p.m. CT and will be carried on ESPN3. “We knew no matter where we were playing that there was a 50 percent chance that we’d have a Tuesday game,” Lipscomb coach Casey Alexander said. “There’s enough software out there now that you can get yourself ready [quickly].” The Bisons (25-7) were in consideration for an at-large bid to the Big Dance, but multiple losses to Belmont and Liberty and an upset defeat at Florida Gulf Coast were too much to overcome. Liberty took the ASUN’s automatic bid after topping the Bisons by a score of 74-68 in the conference championship game on March 10. “We were disappointed after the Liberty loss,” senior forward Rob Marberry said. “We kind of kicked ourselves for maybe a day or two, and then afterward we had to get back to work because we still have games to play.” Lipscomb is doing its best to take the NCAA snub in stride and focus on the NIT, which ends with the Final Four on April 2 and 4 in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. “We’re obviously disappointed we’re not in March Madness, but it’s still great for the program to be playing [in the NIT],” Marberry said. “We’re trying to increase the size of the [Lipscomb] name. Any time a team is...
by Russell Vannozzi | Mar 19, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
The Lipscomb men’s basketball team will soon say goodbye to five seniors, but the loss of that class just got a bit easier to handle. Former Valparaiso forward Parker Hazen announced his transfer to Lipscomb via Twitter Monday afternoon. He will have two years of eligibility remaining and can play immediately because he’s arriving from a junior college. Hazen is fresh off a stellar sophomore season at Iowa Western Community College. He averaged 8.5 points and 6.7 rebounds in 30 games for the Reivers. The 6-foot-8, 205-pounder began his college career at Valparaiso in 2017-18. But after averaging just one point in 8.3 minutes per game his freshman season, Hazen opted to transfer in search of more playing time. “Just planning out how things might go for me the next couple years, it may be close to the same year I had this year and not getting a lot of minutes,” Hazen told the Chicago Tribune last March. “I want to go to a place where I’ll have an opportunity to play — that’s really the only reason.” Hazen signed with Valparasio after a decorated prep career at Columbia City (Ind.) High School, where he averaged 15.8 points per game as a junior. ESPN ranked him as the seventh-best player in Indiana his senior year, while 247Sports listed him as a three-star and the 18th-best player in the state. The lanky forward should provide an immediate shot in the arm for a Lipscomb squad that loses forwards Rob Marberry, Eli Pepper and Matt Rose and guards Garrison Mathews and Nathan Moran. Joining Hazen as newcomers for 2019-20 are power forward Jacob Hobbs,...
by Russell Vannozzi | Mar 18, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
Garrison Mathews shot 35 percent from three-point land his freshman and sophomore seasons at Lipscomb. That clip is nothing to sneeze at, but Mathews wanted to do better. And it just so happened that a local trainer could help him get there. “I didn’t want to be a mid-30 percent shooter, or even a 30 percent shooter at all,” Mathews said. “I wanted to be in the 40s – that was my goal for this year. I put a ton of work in, and I credit Jordan Romine for helping me with that.” Flash forward to this season, and Mathews is averaging 20.1 points per game and shooting 41 percent from three and 85 percent from the free-throw line. He also became Lipscomb’s all-time leading scorer in January and was named ASUN Player of the Year earlier this month. Part of that success is thanks to spending the last two summers working with Romine, a relative unknown in the basketball training world. Romine played at Centennial High School and was later a student manager for the Middle Tennessee women’s basketball team. He has since privately trained a few Blue Raiders, but Mathews is his poster child. “I saw he had potential and thought I could help him if I could get my hands on him,” Romine said. The idea was sparked when Romine heard the Lipscomb-Tennessee basketball game on the radio in December 2016. Mathews, the younger brother of Romine’s friend and former Franklin High School rival Braden Mathews, dropped 28 points and made five threes in a 92-77 loss to the Volunteers that day. “I was like, ‘that’s...
by Russell Vannozzi | Mar 18, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
After being left out of the NCAA tournament, the Lipscomb men’s basketball team learned its postseason fate Sunday night. No. 5 Lipscomb will travel to No. 4 Davidson on Tuesday. Tipoff time is set for 6 p.m. CT at John M. Belk Arena. The winner will play the victor of UNC Greensboro-Campbell on either March 21 or 25. The announcement was made during the NIT Selection Show on ESPNU. It’s Lipscomb’s second NIT appearance. The Bisons lost to UTEP 85-66 in the first round of the 2006 NIT. Lipscomb (25-7) earned an automatic bid to the NIT by being the co-champion of the ASUN in the regular season. Liberty earned the league’s automatic bid to the Big Dance by handing the Bisons a 74-68 defeat in last Sunday’s ASUN championship game. Davidson finished the regular season 24-9 overall and 14-4 in the Atlantic 10. The Wildcats are currently No. 75 in the NET rankings, while the Bisons are No. 49. Eventual champion Saint Louis knocked Davidson out of the A-10 tournament with a resounding 67-44 victory on Saturday in Brooklyn, New York. Lipscomb Athletics did not apply to host NIT first or second round games due to the school’s spring break and a possible venue conflict in Allen Arena. Due to their No. 5 seed, the Bisons are likely to play on the road for the entirety of their NIT run. Tickets for Tuesday’s game are available through Davidson’s official website. Lumination will be sending a coverage team to Davidson. Stay tuned for more NIT...
by Adrienne Luu | Mar 17, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
Lipscomb men’s tennis team played its last match against Georgia Southern before heading into spring break training with a 5-2 loss. The Bisons (5-8) started the match losing the doubles play and were never able to get back up throughout the rest of the match against the Eagles. But Lipscomb’s intense duo in line one, Victor Chaw and Pablo Caffarena, did not disappoint when they defeated GSU’s Stefano Di Aloy and JC Alcala in a win of 6-3. “Line one’s [performance was] probably the best that they’ve played in a while,” Lipscomb head coach Geoff Hernandez said. However, Lipscomb needed another doubles win to take the doubles point, and lines two and three were unable to get the wins for the Bisons. Lipscomb’s Jorge Ortegon and Pedro Uribe, in line two, lost their set 6-2 while Jake Penny and Michael Tougher, in line three, lost 6-4. The Bisons were down at 1-0. “We didn’t have three courts of energy, so we need to do that better,” Hernandez said. “But we have time over spring break to work on that.” Even though the atmosphere didn’t carry enough energy as wanted, the players still tried to transfer the energy they did have over to singles play. But that spark wasn’t enough to help the Bisons pull themselves back up. In line six, Lipscomb’s David Skrabut lost both of his sets 6-3, 6-4 against GSU’s Pascal Wagemaker, placing the Bisons down at 2-0. Following that loss was another loss by Lipscomb’s Uribe, in line four, with an identical loss of 6-3, 6-4 against McCullough. The Bisons were losing 3-0, and GSU needed...
