Men's Basketball Back on Road Wednesday at Richmond

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- The Bison are down to two non-conference games remaining before the start of Patriot League play, and both come on the road in a three-day span later this week. Bucknell visits Richmond on Wednesday night and then heads to Rutgers for a 5 p.m. contest on Friday. Both games will be televised. The Richmond game will air on NBC Sports Washington along with a streaming option on ESPN+, and the Rutgers tilt will air on the Big Ten Network.

After a 12-day break for finals, Bucknell appeared a bit rusty on the offensive end but was stellar defensively in a 61-55 home win over Merrimack on Sunday. The Warriors, preseason favorites in the Northeast Conference, are known for an active 2-3 zone that creates bundles of turnovers, and the Bison obliged with a season-high 20 giveaways on Sunday. Those only led to 10 Merrimack points, however, as Bucknell held an opponent under 40 percent shooting from the field for the ninth time in 11 games this season.

At 7-4 on the season, the Bison have secured a winning non-league record for the first time since 2016-17. They have won five of their last seven contests and will be looking to play well against two top-notch opponents this week, with Patriot League play tipping off on Dec. 30.

The Bison should get center Andre Screen back on Wednesday after a one-game injury absence. Screen had 20 points and 11 rebounds in his most recent outing against La Salle just before the break. Bucknell also welcomed back guard Jack Forrest on Sunday. Forrest, who missed the first 10 games of the season with a lower-leg injury, scored six points in his Bucknell debut. Forrest, a Saint Joseph's transfer, scored six points against Richmond last season.

Richmond won the Atlantic 10 championship and a first-round NCAA Tournament game against Iowa a year ago. The Spiders were one of the oldest teams in the nation and were hit hard by graduation following that championship run, but they did return All-Atlantic 10 forward Tyler Burton (18.0 ppg), and they added a familiar face to Bison fans in 7'0" center Neal Quinn, who transferred from Lafayette. Richmond is 5-6 after a loss to Clemson on Saturday, but two of their losses came in overtime on the road against Syracuse and Charleston, and two others came by three points or fewer against Wichita State and William & Mary.

GAME DIGEST
What: Bucknell (7-4) at Richmond (5-6)
Where: Robins Center, Richmond, Va.
When: Wednesday, Dec. 21, 7 p.m.
TV: NBC Sports Washington
Streaming: ESPN+
Local Radio: The Valley (WVLY 100.9)
Internet Audio: BucknellBison.com
Live Stats: RichmondSpiders.com
COMPLETE GAME NOTES

Bucknell Tentative Starters
G: Elvin Edmonds IV (8.7 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 2.8 apg)
G: Xander Rice (15.9 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 4.3 apg)
F: Ian Motta (7.8 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 1.0 apg)
F: Alex Timmerman (11.6 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.8 apg)
C: Andre Screen (11.6 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.2 bpg)

With a Win over Richmond, Bucknell Would ...

... improve to 8-4 on the season, which would be its best 12-game start since 2016-17.
... win its second straight game and sixth in the last eight.
... improve to 2-3 in true road games this season.
... improve to 1-1 against the Atlantic 10 this season.
... get back over .500 (5-4) in the all-time series with the Spiders.

Headlines

Bucknell finishes up non-conference play with two tough road games in a three-day span this week. After visiting Richmond on Wednesday, the Bison head to Rutgers for a 5 p.m. contest on Friday. The Bison begin Patriot League action on Dec. 30 at Holy Cross.
Bucknell clinched a winning non-conference record with Sunday's 61-55 home victory over Merrimack, the preseason favorite in the Northeast Conference. This is the team's first winning non-conference slate since the 2016-17 team went into league play with an 8-5 record.
Bucknell has shot 50% or better from the field seven times in 11 games this season. The Bison are shooting 50.2% on the season, which ranks 13th nationally. Bucknell also ranks 15th in Division I in effective field-goal percentage (.576), which is an adjusted rate that accounts for the added worth of a 3-pointer, and 14th in 3-point percentage (.403).
Bucknell also ranks 18th nationally in opponent field-goal percentage (.379), and the Bison are one of only two teams in the nation shooting over 50% while holding opponents under 38%. Even when using 40% as the defensive threshold, only four Division I teams make the list.

NCAA Teams Shooting > 50% and Holding Teams <>
Team   FG%   Opponent FG%
James Madison   .513     .394
UMass-Lowell .504    .366
Bucknell    .502   .379
Indiana .500 .397

Xander Rice has upped his scoring output in his senior season and comes into Sunday's game as the Patriot League's third-leading scorer at 15.9 ppg. Rice has scored in double figures in every game this season and 12 straight dating back to last year.

2022-23 Patriot League Scoring Leaders
1. Gerrale Gates, Holy Cross 17.8
2. Tucker Richardson, Colgate 16.5
3. Xander Rice, Bucknell 15.9

Rice was named Tournament MVP of the Ocean Bracket at the Sunshine Slam during Thanksgiving Week. On Sunday against Merrimack, he was held to 11 points, but he did hand out nine assists without a turnover. Rice, who now leads the Patriot League in assist/TO ratio (2.2), is one of only 24 Division I players to log nine or more assists with no turnovers in a game this season, and he is only the fourth Bison to do it in the last 18 years.
Bucknell Players with 9+ Assists, No Turnovers (Since 2004-05)
- Abe Badmus (11A) vs. Kansas, Mar. 18, 2005 (NCAA Tournament)
- Darryl Shazier (10A) at Boston College, Dec. 22, 2010
- Darryl Shazier (9A) vs. Holy Cross, Jan. 16, 2011
- Stephen Brown (9A) vs. Lafayette, Feb. 22, 2017
- Xander Rice (9A) vs. Merrimack, Dec. 18, 2022
Andre Screen turned in one of the best games of his career at La Salle just before the break. Screen logged a double-double with 20 points and 11 rebounds, tying his career scoring high in the process. He was injured late in the contest, however, and did not play against Merrimack.
Screen is slated to return against Richmond, which will bring a reprise of what has been a terrific battle of 7-foot centers between him and former Lafayette Leopard Neal Quinn. The pair matched up three times last season, with all three Bucknell-Lafayette games going to overtime. Both bigs had big games in all three.

Bucknell vs. Lafayette in 2021-22
Date/Location    Result   Screen     Quinn
2/5/22 at Lafayette   Lafayette 74-72 (OT)    18 pts., 7 reb., 9-10 FG    19 pts., 9 reb., 6-13 FG
2/22/22 at Bucknell   Bucknell 92-89 (OT) 17 pts., 5 reb., 8-11 FG    24 pts., 4 reb., 10-14 FG
3/1/22 at Lafayette   Bucknell 82-81 (OT) 16 pts., 5 reb., 6-9 FG 18 pts., 6 reb., 6-10 FG
   17.0 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 76.7 FG%   20.3 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 59.5 FG%

The Bison were picked eighth in the Patriot League preseason coaches' poll, ahead of Holy Cross and Lafayette. Defending-champion Colgate was the preseason No. 1 pick.
Bucknell is looking to bounce back from a 9-23 season a year ago. The Bison were playing well at the end of the season, however, with an overtime win at Lafayette in the Patriot League Tournament first round capping a 3-1 stretch. Bucknell was eliminated by Colgate in the quarterfinal round.
Bucknell won eight Patriot League regular-season titles in a nine-year span from 2011-19, and the Bison went to the NCAA Tournament in 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2018 during that stretch. Now Bucknell is trying to rebound from a rare run of three straight sub-.500 seasons, something that has not happened since 2007-08 to 2009-10, although the Bison did win conference tournament games in each of the last three years.
Bucknell has plenty of Virginia ties. Junior Andre Screen (Alexandria) and sophomore Elvin Edmonds IV (Hopewell) will be returning to their home state. Head coach Nathan Davis grew up on the Maryland side of Washington, D.C., but he played his college ball and later spent six years as head coach at Randolph-Macon.
Likewise, there are a number of Bucknell ties in the Richmond athletic department. Most notably, director of athletics John Hardt was previously the AD at Bucknell for 18 years before moving on to Richmond. Former Bison quarterback Ryan Colton is now Richmond's deputy AD and chief of staff. Another senior associate AD, Lauren Wicklund, previously spent time as an administrator at Bucknell, where she oversaw the athletics leadership program. Head women's basketball coach Aaron Roussell and three of his assistants came to Richmond from Bucknell. Head field hockey coach Jamie Montgomery is a former assistant coach with the Bison, as is her current assistant Alexa Ostoich. Coordinator for student-athlete success R.D. Montgomery is a former assistant football coach at Bucknell. Assistant baseball coach Nate Mulberg was an assistant at Bucknell in 2016. And director of football operations/recruiting coordinator Dave Legg was an assistant coach at Bucknell under Tom Gadd from 1995-2000.
Richmond, the defending Atlantic 10 champion, brings a 5-6 record into Wednesday's game. Two of the team's three losses have come in overtime on the road (Syracuse, Charleston), and two others have come by three points or fewer (Wichita State, William & Mary). The Spiders recently posted back-to-back blowout home wins over Drake (82-52) and Fairleigh Dickinson (77-48) before falling 85-57 to Clemson in their most recent outing on Saturday.
Richmond features one of the A10's best players in senior forward Tyler Burton, who ranks fifth in the league in scoring at 18.0 ppg. Burton, who had a 38-point game against Charleston this season and is coming off a 21-point night against Clemson, was a Second Team All-A10 selection last season. Freshman guard Jason Nelson also scores in double figures at 10.4 ppg. Quinn is shooting 64.9 FG% while posting 8.0 ppg and 4.5 rpg.
Last year's Richmond squad was one of the oldest in the nation, and the Spiders won four games in four days to claim the Atlantic 10 Tournament title. After coming from behind to defeat top-seeded Davidson in the final, the 12th-seeded Spiders then knocked off Iowa 67-63 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Richmond fell 79-51 to Providence in the second round in Buffalo.

How to Get the Game

Wednesday's game will stream live on ESPN+ and will also be televised on NBC Sports Washington. Bob Black and Greg Beckwith will describe the action.
Veteran play-by-play man Doug Birdsong will have the local radio call on The Valley (100.9 FM) in the Susquehanna Valley.
The audio feed is also available online free of charge via BucknellBison.com.
Live statistics can be accessed via RichmondSpiders.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Bucknell vs. Richmond Series Notes

The Bison and Spiders have meet eight times on the hardwood, and the series is all knotted at four wins apiece. Richmond won the first three, Bucknell took the next four, and then the Spiders ended that streak with a runaway win last season at the Robins Center.
The Bison are 2-3 on Richmond's home floor and 2-2 at the Robins Center. The very first meeting came on Feb. 1, 1958, an 81-63 Spiders verdict in Richmond, but that was before the Robins Center was constructed.
In last year's meeting, Bucknell trailed by only 10 with eight minutes to play but then fell victim to a staggering run from Nick Sherod and the Spiders, who pulled away for an 81-50 win. Sherod was 0-for-6 from 3-point range and scoreless in the game with nine minutes to play, but the sixth-year graduate student splashed five straight threes in just over five minutes to spark Richmond's game-changing 28-5 run. Grant Golden led Richmond with 22 points and 10 rebounds. Xander Rice was Bucknell's top scorer with 10.
Bucknell's last series win came on Dec. 19, 2017 in Richmond, when the Bison came from 14 points down to win 86-78. Zach Thomas scored 20 of his 27 points in the second half for the Bison, who would go on to win the Patriot League championship that season.
One of Bucknell's most memorable wins in recent memory came at the Robins Center on Jan. 2, 2011. In a play reminiscent of the famous Christian Laettner shot that beat Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA Tournament, Mike Muscala took a 70-foot inbounds pass from Joe Willman and hit a turnaround jumper as time expired to give the Bison a 62-61 win. That Richmond team had already beaten No. 8 Purdue, Arizona State, and Seton Hall, and they would go on to finish 29-8, win the Atlantic 10 title, and advance to the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen.

Notable Numbers

Through 11 games in 2022-23, Bucknell has been much-improved defensively over last season, when the Bison struggled to get stops. Bucknell ranks No. 1 in the Patriot League in field-goal percentage defense and 3-point defense, and No. 2 in scoring defense.

Scoring Defense   Opp. FG%   Opp 3FG%
2021-22 79.4 .466   .373
2022-23    64.0   .379      .317

Bucknell has held nine of its 11 opponents under 40% from the field this season. The team's streak of six straight games holding opponents under 40% shooting from the field came to an end at La Salle. Saint Peter's (.516) and La Salle (.500) are the only two teams to hit better than 40% against the Bison this season.
Bucknell shot 50% or better from the field nine times last season and has already done so seven times this year. The Bison are currently one of only five teams in the nation shooting better than 50% from the field and 40% from 3-point distance.

NCAA Teams Shooting > 50%FG and >40% 3FG%
Team   FG%   3FG%
1. Xavier .516   .423
2. James Madison   .513   .406
3. Utah State .508   .457
4. Louisiana .507   .410
5. Bucknell .502   .403

The Bison have a +4.0 rebounding margin on the season, but they would like to improve on the defensive glass. Opponents have 124 offensive rebounds to Bucknell's 95, and that area was particularly costly in the four losses to Saint Peter's, Georgia, Marist, and La Salle, which combined for a 62-16 edge in second-chance points.
Xander Rice had his streak of 26 straight games with a 3-pointer end against Merrimack. He had made multple threes in every game this season before going 0-for-5 from the arc against the Warriors.

Last Time Out

Alex Timmerman scored nine of his team-high 15 points in the second half and Xander Rice registered all 11 of his points after halftime to lead Bucknell to a 61-55 victory over Merrimack on Sunday afternoon at Sojka Pavilion.
Bucknell held a 23-21 advantage at halftime and opened the second half on a 24-12 run to build its largest lead (47-32) of the game with just over 13 minutes to play. The Bison still led by double figures with just over five minutes to go, but Merrimack knocked down two straight 3-pointers to draw to within one possession with just over 2:30 to play.
With its lead down to 56-53, Bucknell allowed only two more points the rest of the way, and Timmerman, Rice, and Jake van der Heijden combined to make 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch to clinch the victory.
Rice totaled a career-high nine assists along with his 11 points, while Timmerman pulled down five rebounds. Elvin Edmonds IV, who hit two 3-pointers to help the Bison stretch out their lead, also tallied a career-high eight rebounds as Bucknell finished with a 37-21 edge on the glass.
Bucknell shot 45.2% (19 of 42) from the field and 90.0% (18 of 20) from the free throw line, but offensively the Bison struggled at times to take care of the ball against Merrimack's swarming zone defense.
The Warriors, who were picked as the preseason favorite in the Northeast Conference, came in forcing 17.5 turnovers per game while averaging 10.2 steals per game. The Bison obliged with 20 turnovers, including 12 in the first half, but Bucknell's own solid defense negated some of that impact. Merrimack was only able to parlay those 20 takeaways into 10 points, and the Bison actually finished with a 24-10 edge in points off turnovers thanks to 15 Warriors miscues.

Who's Got Next?

Bucknell will bus from Richmond to Rutgers, with an overnight layover in the Baltimore area, in advance of Friday's game against the Scarlet Knights. That is a 5 p.m. game at Jersey Mike's Arena, and it will be televised on the Big Ten Network.
Rutgers is 7-4 on the season, including a 15-point win over a top-10 Indiana team on Dec. 3. The Scarlet Knights drubbed Wake Forest 81-57 at home on Saturday and are idle until facing the Bison on Friday.

Men's Basketball Back on Road Wednesday at Richmond

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Elvin Edmonds IV

Jack Forrest

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Jake van der Heijden

Men's Basketball Back on Road Wednesday at Richmond

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Elvin Edmonds IV

Jack Forrest

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Jake van der Heijden

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