Two Hot Teams Collide when Bison Host Greyhounds Wednesday at Sojka Pavilion

What: Loyola (7-12, 3-3 PL) at Bucknell (11-7, 5-1 PL)
Where: Sojka Pavilion, Lewisburg, Pa. | BUY TICKETS
When: Wednesday, Jan. 23, 7 p.m.
Internet: Patriot League Network
Local Radio: Eagle 107 (107.3 FM WEGH)
Listen Live: BucknellBison.com and Eagle107.com
Live Stats: BucknellBison.com

• COMPLETE GAME NOTES

Happenings

Free admission for federal government employees (up to four tickets, show Govt. ID at Sojka Pavilion Box Office after 6 p.m.)

Bucknell Probable Starters
G: Jimmy Sotos (9.6 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 6.1 apg)
G: Kimbal Mackenzie (16.1 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 3.1 apg)
G: Avi Toomer (9.0 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 1.7 apg)
F: Bruce Moore (10.2 ppg, 4.6 rpg, 0.7 apg)
C: Nate Sestina (16.6 ppg, 7.9 rpg, 1.1 apg)

With a Win over Loyola, Bucknell Would ...

Win its season-high fifth straight game and improve to 12-7 overall and 6-1 in the Patriot League.
Maintain sole possession of first place in the Patriot League.
Win its fifth straight home game.
Move 100 games over .500 against Patriot League opponents at Sojka Pavilion (126-26).
Defeat the Greyhounds for the fourth straight time and improve to 17-3 all-time against them.
Improve to 287-118 all-time in Patriot League play and 112-27 in the PL over the last nine seasons.
Up head coach Nathan Davis' record to 80-40 at Bucknell.

Headlines

The Patriot League's two hottest team collide on Wednesday at Sojka Pavilion. Loyola comes to town on a three-game winning streak, which came on the heels of an 0-3 start in league play. The Greyhounds have vaulted all the way up into a tie for fourth place in the league standings. Meanwhile, Bucknell puts a season-high four-game winning streak on the line. The Bison took over sole possession of first place with their most recent win, an 85-83 thriller at Lehigh on Saturday.
Saturday's game at Lehigh was a wild one. There were 20 lead changes and 12 ties, and neither team led by more than six points all day. The Bison seemed to be taking over the game with a 10-0 run in the late stages, but trailing by five points, the Mountain Hawks hit a 3-pointer with 11 seconds left, stole the inbounds pass, and made the tying layup with 6.7 seconds to go. Then Jimmy Sotos rescued the Bison with a coast-to-coast drive for the winning shot with 1.2 seconds remaining.
Senior guard Kimbal Mackenzie, who became the 43rd Bucknell player to score 1,000 career points last week against Holy Cross, will be recognized prior to the game. Mackenzie is coming off a 25-point effort at Lehigh.
Bucknell has had a knack for coming from behind this season. The Bison have won a game after trailing by 10 or more points six different times this season, including their first three Patriot League wins.
Nate Sestina has lived up to his Preseason All-Patriot League billing thus far. The Bison are 11-5 this season with Sestina in the lineup — he missed the Fairfield and Canisius games with an injury — and he is averaging a team-best 16.6 points and 7.9 rebounds per game. Sestina, who served as the backup center behind former Patriot League Player of the Year Nana Foulland for the last three seasons, was named to the All-Tournament Team at the Diamond Head Classic. Sestina was the Patriot League Player of the Week on Jan. 7 after averaging 24.5 points and 10.5 rebounds against Army and Boston University. His 27 points against the Terriers was a career high, until he surpassed it with 32 on perfect 11-for-11 shooting against Holy Cross.
Bucknell is looking to continue its run of success following the graduation of one of its all-time great senior classes. The trio of point guard Stephen Brown, forward Zach Thomas and center Nana Foulland were all First Team All-Patriot League selections last year, and they accounted for 4,801 career points. Despite the heavy graduation hit, four of Bucknell's five opening-night starters managed to start at least 10 games last season. And the only one that didn't — Nate Sestina — was a Preseason All-Patriot League selection.
Last season, Bucknell finished 25-10 overall and 16-2 in the Patriot League. The Bison swept Loyola, Boston University and Colgate — with the latter two wins coming by a combined 60 points — to win the Patriot League Tournament crown. Bucknell's eighth NCAA Tournament appearance resulted in a narrow 82-78 first-round loss to third-seeded Michigan State in Detroit.
Loyola comes in on a three-game winning streak, with the verdicts coming against Army (home), Boston University (home) and Holy Cross (away). All three have been tight affairs, with the Army win coming by two points and the latter two in overtime. The Greyhounds, under first-year head coach Tavaras Hardy have been strong at home (4-2) but have struggled on the road (2-10) this season. Loyola features a Patriot League Player of the Year candidate in junior Andrew Kostecka. He leads the Patriot League in scoring (20.4) and steals (2.2), and he shoots 85.8% from the foul line while leading the conference in both makes (91) and attempts (106).

How to Get the Game

The Bucknell-Loyola game will be streamed live on the Patriot League Network at PatriotLeague.tv.
The game can be heard in the Susquehanna Valley on the radio on Eagle 107 (WEGH 107.3 FM), with Doug Birdsong calling the action. The pregame show begins 30 minutes before tip-off.
The audio feed is available online free of charge via BucknellBison.com.
Live statistics can be accessed at BucknellBison.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Last Time Out

Jimmy Sotos hit the game-winning layup with 1.2 seconds remaining, answering Lehigh's tying shot just moments earlier, giving Bucknell a wild 85-83 victory in a terrific college basketball game between the Patriot League leaders on Saturday at Stabler Arena.
Kimbal Mackenzie led five Bison in double figures with 25 points, and Bruce Moore added a career-high 19 to help Bucknell gain sole possession of first place.
Bucknell trailed 76-72 with 4:26 to play, but then outscored Lehigh 10-0 over the next four minutes to go up 82-76. But Lehigh battled back. The Mountain Hawks pulled within 83-81 on a Lance Tejada 3-pointer with 11 seconds left, then they came up with a steal on the inbounds and fed Pat Andree for the tying layup with 0:07 left. Sotos raced the ball up the court and got all the way to the bucket before finishing a tough layup over Tejada with 1.2 ticks left. Mackenzie then disrupted a halfcourt heave at the buzzer, and the Bison celebrated their fourth straight victory.
Neither team led by more than six points in the contest, and there were a whopping 20 lead changes and 12 ties.
The Bison won the game despite yet another 3-point blitz from Lehigh. The Mountain Hawks came into the game as the top 3-point shooting team in the nation at 46%, and they went 14-for-23 (.609) in this one. Kyle Leufroy went 6-for-9 from long distance and scored a game-high 26 points.
Moore's career-high 19 points came on 7-for-12 shooting, including a pair of threes in three attempts. He also continued his recent rebounding prowess with eight boards, giving him 33 in his last three games.
Sotos, Sestina and Paul Newman also hit double figures with 10 points each. Sestina added seven rebounds and went 5-for-9 from the field, but he was limited to 21 minutes due to foul trouble. He made his first bucket of the day to give him 15 straight made field goals over a three-game span. Newman scored all 10 of his points in the first half after Sestina had to go to the bench with two fouls. He also grabbed seven rebounds, blocked a shot and dished out an assist.

Bucknell vs. Loyola

The Bison and Greyhounds have met 19 times previously. Bucknell leads 16-3 in the series, including a 10-1 mark since Loyola joined the Patriot League in 2013-14.
Bucknell is 8-1 all-time at Loyola's Reitz Arena and 8-2 at home (2-0 in Davis Gym, 6-2 at Sojka Pavilion). Both of the Greyhounds' wins in Sojka Pavilion came before they joined the Patriot League.
Bucknell had beaten Loyola eight straight times until the Greyhounds won 78-77 in Baltimore in 2016-17.
The first series meeting came on Jan. 7, 1987 in Lewisburg. The Bison prevailed that day 72-70. A year later Bucknell won 80-60 on Loyola's home floor.
Bucknell and Loyola played twice within the 1992-93 season. The Bison won 75-59 in Baltimore, and in late February at Davis Gym the Bison rolled to a 116-85 victory. In the latter game, the Bison produced their second-highest point total in program history, led by an incredible 9-for-10 3-point shooting performance by Hall-of-Famer Mike Bright.
Bucknell took all three games from the Greyhounds last season, as the two teams met in the postseason for the first time. At Reitz Arena, Zach Thomas recorded 25 points and 12 rebounds to lead the Bison to a come-from-behind, 78-70 win. Bucknell outscored Loyola 50-37 after trailing 33-28 at the half. Andre Walker led Loyola with 21 points. At Sojka Pavilion on Valentine's Day, the Bison blitzed the Greyhounds 94-53 behind 20 points from Stephen Brown and 18 off the bench from Nate Sestina. The two teams met again at Sojka in the Patriot League Tournament quarterfinals, with the Bison prevailing in a much-closer affair, 83-78. Thomas posted 27 points and 11 rebounds and Kimbal Mackenzie tallied 18 points for the Bison, while Walker led five Greyhounds in double figures with 17.

Numbers Worth Noting

Coming into last week, Bucknell had lost 24 straight games dating back five years when the opponent shot 50% or better from the field. The Bison broke that streak in the Jan. 14 home win over Holy Cross, when the Crusaders hit on an even 50%, and now Bucknell has won two straight in that circumstance after Lehigh shot 51.7% on Saturday.
When Nate Sestina went 11-for-11 against Holy Cross, he raised his career field-goal percentage from .529 to .540. Sestina set the Bucknell single-game record and tied the Patriot League mark on his way to a career-high 32 points. He made his lone 3-point field goal attempt and all 10 of his two-point field goals, while also making nine out of 10 free throw attempts. Donald Brown held the previous Bucknell mark of made field goals in a game without a miss, making all 10 of his shots against Lehigh, exactly 15 years earlier, Jan. 14, 2004.

NCAA LEADERS, MOST FIELD GOALS WITHOUT A MISS IN 2018-19
Levi Bradley (Northern Illinois) 13   11/25 vs. Oakland
Raasean Davis (North Carolina Central) 12   1/14 vs. Delaware State
Connor MacDougall (Utah Valley) 12   12/19 vs. Idaho State
Darius Brown II (Cal-State Northridge) 12   11/27 vs. Washington State
Xavier Hill-Mais (Oakland) 12   11/19 vs. Defiance
Nate Sestina (Bucknell) 11   1/14 vs. Holy Cross
Obi Toppin (Dayton) 11   12/19 vs. Western Michigan
Matt Wilson (Army) 11   11/17 vs. UMass-Lowell

Sestina's 32 points tied the Sojka Pavilion record for points scored by a Bison player, matching the output by Chris Hass, on March 5, 2015, against Holy Cross, and Zach Thomas, on Jan. 31, 2018, against Army. Sestina also had seven rebounds in the victory.
Junior Bruce Moore has begun to assert himself on the boards. He posted a career-high 15 rebounds against American on Jan. 12, and he has added 10 against Holy Cross and eight against American in the two games since then. This three-game stretch has lifted his season rebounding average from 3.3 to 4.6 per game. Moore is also averaging 12.3 points per game over the same three-game stretch.
Senior Kimbal Mackenzie has a knack for taking charges. He drew four offensive fouls in the La Salle game on Dec. 4, and he has a team-high 13 drawn charges this season.
Sophomore Jimmy Sotos struggled in the turnover category early in the season, but over the last 11 games, he has 74 assists with only 23 turnovers. Sotos averages 6.9 assists per game in Bucknell's victories and 4.9 in the losses.
As a team, the Bison rank 38th nationally in assists per made field goal (.585).
Sotos has given the Bison a lift on the boards as well. He ranks 13th overall and second among Patriot League guards in defensive rebounds with 4.3 per game.
Sophomore Paul Newman has played well in the first extended action of his career, and he has emerged as one of the Patriot League's top shot-blockers. Newman ranks third in the league with 1.4 blocks per game, even though he plays just 15.2 minutes per game. Newman averages 3.8 blocks per 40 minutes.
Sophomore John Meeks has provided a big lift since returning from injury at Ohio State on Dec. 15. In 10 games since coming back, Meeks has totaled 57 points (22-39 FG) and 21 rebounds. He averages 19.3 ppg per 40 minutes.
Bucknell's shot chart from the La Salle game was a statistical analyst's dream. In a game in which the Bison scored 92 points, all 29 made field goals were either dunks (6), layups (12), or 3-pointers (11). In fact, Bucknell did not attempt a 2-point shot outside the paint all night.
Bucknell's non-conference schedule was ranked as the 77th-hardest in the nation, according to statistical analyst Ken Pomeroy. Bucknell's 12 non-league foes combined for a 260-141 (.648) overall record and a 144-70 (.673) mark within their respective leagues last year. Nine of the 12 teams won at least 20 games, and 10 of the 12 had winning records.
Bucknell went 3-0 against the Atlantic 10 this season. The Bison averaged 88 points per game in wins over St. Bonaventure, La Salle and Rhode Island.
Mackenzie has played 115 of a possible 120 minutes in the second halves of Patriot League games thus far.

Who's Got Next?

Bucknell heads back on the road on Saturday to face American at Bender Arena at 4 p.m.
This will be the second meeting of the year between the Bison and Eagles. Bucknell won a narrow 55-54 decision at Sojka Pavilion on Jan. 12.

Two Hot Teams Collide when Bison Host Greyhounds Wednesday at Sojka Pavilion

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Stephen Brown

Nana Foulland

Kimbal Mackenzie

John Meeks

Bruce Moore

Paul Newman

Nate Sestina

Jimmy Sotos

Zach Thomas

Avi Toomer

Two Hot Teams Collide when Bison Host Greyhounds Wednesday at Sojka Pavilion

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Next Event

Players Mentioned

Stephen Brown

Nana Foulland

Kimbal Mackenzie

John Meeks

Bruce Moore

Paul Newman

Nate Sestina

Jimmy Sotos

Zach Thomas

Avi Toomer

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