by Mckenzi Harris | Dec 4, 2019 | Galleries, News Slider, Sports
The Bisons took another hard loss to the Bruins in the second installment of the Battle of the Boulevard this season. The final from the Curb Event Center was 80-75. “We’re sitting at 3 in 6 and that’s not where we wanna be,” Head Coach Lennie Acuff said. “But there’s probably not many people at our level playing the schedule we play, and so we just need to keep getting better.” The team won two road games over the last week and a half against Navy and Tennessee Tech, and they also hung in for the majority of the Xavier game, despite being without three of their starters. Michaell Buckland, Jake Wolfe and Greg Jones have sat the bench until tonight, due to injuries suffered in the first matchup against Belmont last month. “It helped getting a couple of guys back tonight that have been out for a couple of weeks,” Coach Acuff said. This, the 146th installment of the Battle of the Boulevard, was a Battle as always. The score stayed tight until the middle of the second half when the Bruins began to knock down shot after shot gaining a 13 point lead on the Bisons. Belmont’s freshman guard Adam Kunkel got on a hot streak shooting and got the Bruins score up to 71-58 on the Bisons with 2:42 left in the second half. “The thing I think he’s gotten better at is, he’s not a catch-and-shoot guy. He’s obviously a really good shooter, but he’s got game, he can put it down… he’s much more athletic than you think.” Coach Acuff said about Adam Kunkel....
by Erika Plunkett | Dec 1, 2019 | News Slider, Sports
For the third consecutive game, the Bisons were on the road and without three of their starters. Senior guard Michael Buckland, sophomore guard Greg Jones, and sophomore guard Jake Wolfe, sat out, leaving a smaller and younger roster to face off against the five upperclassmen starters for the Xavier Musketeers, who were all 6’4” or taller. Saturday afternoon, Lipscomb traveled north to Cincinnati where they fell to No. 25 Xavier 87-62. “We were without three guys that are really key to our team, so I thought we got tired in several instances in both halves and that’s when they went on runs,” Lipscomb head coach Lennie Acuff said. With their speed, the undersized Lipscomb roster was able to disrupt Xavier’s offense for the first ten minutes of the game, but once the Musketeers got into a rhythm in the paint, the Bisons couldn’t find an answer. On both the offense and defense, Lipscomb struggled to get rebounds, allowing Xavier to score 24 second-chance points. “We have to be a little more physical. We need to turn freshman into sophomores and juniors – that would help. They had grown men out there. But we are going to be fine; we just need to keep working.” It was not all bad news for Lipscomb though. Freshman guard KJ Johnson finished with a career-high 25 points and sophomore center Ahsan Asadullah came up just one rebound short of a double-double with 18 points and 9 rebounds. “I was proud of how hard our guys fought,” Acuff said. “It was a one-point game with eight or nine minutes left in the first half,...
by Mckenzi Harris | Nov 13, 2019 | Galleries, News Slider, Sports
What started as a double-digit lead turned into a difficult 79-78 loss for the Bisons against the TSU Tigers on Tuesday night. After an almost-comeback for the Bisons led by KJ Johnson, the Tigers took off with a quick drive to win the game. During the first half, Lipscomb led by as many as 11 points, a quick and promising lead on the Tigers. The team struggled without Ahsan Asadullah on the court. The Bisons ran the offense through senior Michael Buckland. Buckland scored a season-high of 14 points. However, the struggles didn’t show much until the second half. Tennessee State opened the second half with a 15-6 run and a three, putting them ahead 55-50. As the half continued, the Tigers flipped the game and held a lead, putting the Bisons 12 points behind with three minutes left on the clock. That’s when freshman KJ Johnson took the game back over, at least temporarily. Johnson drove a shot in from the left-wing, banking a shot off the window with seven seconds remaining on the clock. Johnson’s shot to put the Bisons back on top 78-77. TSU’s Michael Littlejohn then drove the ball the length of the floor, putting the Tigers back in the lead, 79-78 with 0.1 seconds remaining. In the first road game of the season, the Bisons shot 50 percent from the floor, 27 of 54 attempts, and hit 17 for 12 in free throws, a 71 percent clip. Fleming led the Bisons in assists for the third consecutive game, Hazen went 5 of 7 from the field with 4 rebounds. Hazen also made his career...
by Kathryn Farris | Nov 10, 2019 | Galleries, News Slider, Sports
MTSU survived a nail-biter to spoil Lipscomb’s homecoming 73-70 Saturday in Allen Arena. With less than two minutes remaining in the game, the score was 66-66. However, sparked by C.J. Jones’ hit from downtown, and the Blue Raiders eked out the victory. Throughout the game, Lipscomb and MTSU went toe-to-toe, keeping the crowd of students, alums and family members on the edges of their seats. Lipscomb’s Ahsan Asadullah had a big night, scoring 18 points and grabbing a career-high 13 rebounds for his second straight double-double. He added three blocks and two steals. Another standout was senior guard Andrew Fleming, who added seven rebounds and four assists for the second straight game. Asadullah and Fleming were joined in double-figure scoring by senior guard Michael Buckland and sophomore guard Jake Wolfe. Although the Bisons had four players in double-digit scoring, offense was a major problem for both teams throughout the game. Scoring runs were short lived, and droughts were the storyline for much of the game. On one such run, after Lipscomb took a 7-2 lead, the Bisons ended up missing their next nine shots. MTSU experienced similar difficulty, only making three of their first 14 attempts. While both teams started slowly, it was the Blue Raiders who put together a stronger performance in the first half and led 37-31 going into the break. After halftime, Asadullah pulled Lipscomb to 49-49 game by scoring six of his eight second-half points all within the first five minutes. But Lipscomb fell behind once again, and just a few minutes later, Middle Tennessee had its second largest lead of the game 60-51. Yet, as...
by Kailey Schuyler | Nov 6, 2019 | Galleries, News Slider, Sports
The 2019-2020 season is off to a hot start for the men’s basketball team, which defeated Rhodes College 104-55 Tuesday night. It is a new era for this team, now being led by Lennie Acuff, the 19th coach in program history. “I told the guys after the game that this is my 30th season as a head coach, but tonight was as nervous as I have ever been for an opening game,” Acuff said. “It’s a new place, and I wanted the team to play well.” “I thought we played really hard in the first half, we just didn’t play very well. But in the second half, I felt we slowed the game down a little bit and got in our lane. I am proud of the way the guys played.” Making his first career start, Andrew Fleming joined center Ahsan Asadullah in double figures with 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting. The guard — one of only two seniors on the squad — also reeled in seven boards and matched a team high with four assists. “We put in a lot of work over the summer working every day,” Fleming said. “I love these teammates and am excited to play with them. They are all great guys, and you can see on the floor we have fun. I think our camaraderie translates to us playing well on the court together.” Asadullah had the first double-double of his career with 12 points and 10 rebounds to lead the Bisons. All 13 players who saw playing time scored against the Lynx. Freshman K. J. Johnson led the team with 14 points. Three of...
