NASHVILLE – The Lipscomb men’s basketball team held onto a second-half lead to beat the Eastern Kentucky Colonels 83-73 Saturday evening at Allen Arena.
Behind three double-digit scorers and seven players scoring five or more points, a balanced Bisons offense was too much for the visiting Colonels to overcome.
Second-year freshman guard Tommy Murr led Lipscomb with 16 points on 5-7 shooting, including a 4-6 mark from beyond the three-point line. Hailing from Athens, Alabama, Murr added eight rebounds, three assists, and a block off the bench.
Bench scoring was a key for the Bisons, as they outscored EKU 38-28 across their substitutes. Sophomore guard KJ Johnson found a major role as a bench player in his fifth straight game being replaced in the starting five by freshman Trae Benham.
Johnson scored 8 points, including two momentum-building threes, while adding three assists and a defensive rebound.
“I’ve been struggling a little bit from the three this season, so it was definitely good to just get some of them to fall tonight,” the third-year guard from Lewisburg said. “My teammates made the right looks to get me open.”
Coming into the game averaging over 15 points per contest, leading scorer Ahsan Asadullah earned his first career double-double without points being one of the categories.
The senior center from Atlanta only managed five points, all of which came at the free throw line, but he dished out 10 assists and picked up 10 rebounds on the night, running the offense for a majority of his 30 minutes on the court.
“That’s just the type of player Ahsan is,” Johnson said. “He’s unselfish; he could easily go and get 30 [points] every night, but he just finds a way to help us win and he gets everybody open with the double-teams. He always makes the right play.”
The first half was a story that rang familiar for the Lipscomb faithful, as the Bisons scored efficiently throughout the half and kept a high-flying Colonels team at bay defensively. Shooting the ball at a 43% clip with a 42% three-point mark helped the Bisons go into the locker room with a 43-37 advantage.
The second half featured more hot shooting from the Bisons, especially from junior guard Greg Jones. The Frisco, Texas-born shooting guard scored 12 of his 15 points on 4-5 three-point shooting in the second half.
Murr also knocked down a three early on in the half to put Lipscomb ahead by 13, their largest lead of the game, with 12:16 to play.
After enduring five games this season where they built a double-digit lead in the second half and went on to lose the game, Lipscomb knew their work was not yet done.
“I just feel like we had extra energy,” Johnson said. “When we needed a play, everybody stepped up and made it. That just helped us keep the lead in the second half.”
Jomaru Brown scored 10 of his game-leading 18 points after the 12-minute mark to keep the Colonels competitive, but Lipscomb couldn’t be stopped on offense.
Jones and Murr made threes with a Parker Hazen free throw in between to give Lipscomb a 7-0 run after EKU had cut the lead to 66-63 with eight minutes left.
A pair of dunks from Hazen, a graduate forward from Columbia City, Indiana, punctuated the much-needed win for the Bisons.
The Bisons even the season series at 1-1 after falling by 14 points to EKU in the first leg in Richmond, Kentucky.
Lipscomb now sits in fourth position in the West Division of the ASUN Conference with a 4-8 record, while EKU drops to fifth place in the West with a 3-9 record in the conference. The third and fourth seeds in each division earn the right to host a first-round tournament game, while fifth and sixth places will play away games to open the ASUN Tournament.
After winning just one of their past five games, Lipscomb improves their overall record to 11-16. They are next in action 7 p.m. Wednesday at Allen Arena when they host Jacksonville State, another team who beat the Bisons in the away fixture of the season series.
That match will be broadcast live on The Bison, Lipscomb’s on-campus radio station.
Photo courtesy of Lipscomb Athletics