Men's Basketball Visits No. 9 Duke Friday Evening

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Bucknell's four-game road trip wraps up on Friday evening with the team's toughest test yet, a date with No. 9 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The 6 p.m. contest will be televised on the ACC Network, and it is part of Duke's Blue Devil Challenge, a three-game, campus-site event also featuring La Salle and Southern Indiana. The Bison fell 69-57 at La Salle on Tuesday, and they will host Southern Indiana on Monday at Sojka Pavilion.

The Bison turned in their most complete performance of the season in last Saturday's 73-64 win at Niagara, but they couldn't build on that victory on Tuesday. Playing in Philadelphia for the second time in less than a week, Bucknell was strong defensively in the first half at La Salle, but the Explorers' veteran backcourt warmed up in the final 20 minutes.

Jack Forrest scored a career-high 27 points against La Salle, upping his season average to 16.8 points per game. Noah Williamson (11.5 ppg, 7.0 rpg) also scores in double figures and leads the team on the glass, keyed by his 22-point, 11-rebound effort at Niagara.

Bucknell will be playing at Duke for the first time since the 2005-06 season. The J.J. Redick-led Blue Devils were ranked No. 1 in the nation at the time, and they handed the Bison a rare loss in a 27-5 season. This year's Duke squad dropped from No. 2 to No. 9 in the national polls after losing to Arizona last week, but the Blue Devils bounced back with a 74-65 win over Michigan State in Chicago on Tuesday.

GAME DIGEST
What: Bucknell (1-3) at No. 9 Duke (2-1)
Where: Cameron Indoor Stadium, Durham, N.C.
When: Friday, Nov. 17, 6 p.m.
TV: ACC Network
Local Radio: The Valley (100.9 FM)
Internet Audio: BucknellBison.com
Live Stats: GoDuke.com
COMPLETE GAME NOTES

With a Win over Duke, Bucknell Would ...

... defeat a nationally ranked team for the first time since Nov. 22, 2005 (74-69 over No. 17 Syracuse; 0-16 since then).
... defeat a top-10 team for the second time in school history (69-66 over No. 10/7 Pitt on Jan. 2, 2005).
... improve to 4-32 all-time against teams ranked in the AP poll.
... defeat an ACC team for the first time since the 1960-61 season (Virginia 99-81), and for only the third time ever.
... defeat a team from a Power 5 conference for the first time since the 2016-17 season (Vanderbilt 75-72).
... improve to 1-3 all-time against Duke.

Headlines

Bucknell's grueling early season schedule continues on Friday evening when the Bison head to No. 9 Duke as part of the Blue Devil Challenge.
Since opening the season at home against Delaware on Nov. 6, this will be Bucknell's fourth straight road game, all in a span of nine days. Bucknell was one of only 20 Division I teams in the nation that had played four games through Tuesday.
The Bison are 1-2 on this current four-game road trip, with both losses coming in the city of Philadelphia. Bucknell fell at Penn on Nov. 8, then defeated Niagara 73-64 on Saturday before returning to Philly on Tuesday to play La Salle. The Explorers pulled away in the second half to win that one 69-57.
The Bison delivered first-year head coach John Griffin III his first head coaching win on Saturday night, defeating Niagara 73-64 at the Gallagher Center. Bucknell got out to a slow start for the third straight game, trailing by as many as nine, but this time the Bison were able to flip the game around. They outscored the Purple Eagles 16-4 in the final five minutes of the first half and then shot 58% in the second half.
Sophomore center Noah Williamson had a breakout game at Niagara, logging 22 points and 11 rebounds. Jack Forrest also had a double-double with 11 points and 10 rebounds, and then he backed up that performance with a career-high 27 points at La Salle.
Forrest is Bucknell's leading scorer at 16.8 ppg. That is the second-highest average in the Patriot League, trailing only Holy Cross' Joe Octave (19.3 ppg).
Bucknell will be without starting point guard Elvin Edmonds IV on Friday. The junior from Hopewell, Va., was injured late in the first half at La Salle and did not return. In his place, junior Josh Bascoe is expected to make his first start of the season and third of his career.
Bascoe has been strong off the bench for the Bison thus far. He handed out eight assists on opening night against Delaware, he recorded his first career double-digit scoring game with 10 at Penn, and then he topped that with 15 points at Niagara. A dozen of those points came in the second half, when he hit two critical shots down the stretch and then iced it with two free throws with 31 seconds remaining.
Bucknell is just getting going in its 129th season of basketball, dating back to its first game on Feb. 14, 1896, a 16-14 victory over Lock Haven.
Bucknell is looking to rebound from a 12-20 season a year ago. The Bison went 5-13 in Patriot League play and fell 64-59 at American in the first round of the Patriot League Tournament.
The Bison were picked ninth in this year's Patriot League preseason poll, one spot ahead of Army West Point. Defending-champion Colgate was the preseason No. 1 pick. Griffin is one of five new head coaches in the Patriot League this season.
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 four straight sub-.500 seasons, something that has not happened since 2000-01 to 2003-04.
The Bison must replace their top three scorers in Xander Rice (14.1 ppg), Alex Timmerman (11.4 ppg), and Andre Screen (11.2 ppg), along with veteran forward Jake van der Heijden (3.3 ppg). Rice (Monmouth), Timmerman (Winthrop), and van der Heijden (North Florida) are all playing as fifth-year graduate students this year, while Screen is now at Butler.
In their place are incoming transfers Quin Berger (Saint Joseph's) and Pip Ajayi (Mercyhurst) and true freshmen Brandon McCreesh and Patrick O'Brien.
Duke was ranked No. 2 in the preseason polls, dropped to No. 9 after falling 78-73 at home to No. 12 Arizona, and then rebounded with a 74-65 win over No. 18 Michigan State at the State Farm Champions Classic in Chicago on Tuesday.
Freshman Caleb Foster led the Blue Devils with 18 points in the win over Michigan State. He is one of four Duke players averaging in double figures through three games. Kyle Filipowski, who had 25 in each of the first two games against Dartmouth and Arizona, paces the squad at 21.7 ppg, followed by Jeremy Roach (12.7), Mark Mitchell (11.0), and Foster (11.0).
Filipowski, a 7'0" center, was the ACC Rookie of the Year, the Kyle Macy National Freshman of the Year, and the ACC Tournament MVP a year ago after leading the Blue Devils to the league title.
Former Duke All-American Jon Scheyer is in his second season as head coach after succeeding Hall-of-Famer Mike Krzyzewski. Scheyer led the Blue Devils to a 27-9 record, including an unbeaten home mark, in his debut season.

How to Get the Game

The Bucknell-Duke game will be televised on the ACC Network. Mike Monaco and Tim Welch will call the action from Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Doug Birdsong is back for his 24th season as Bucknell's play-by-play announcer, and he will have the radio call on WVLY 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 GoDuke.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Last Time Out

Philadelphia native Jack Forrest scored a career-high 27 points, but La Salle broke open a five-point game with a big second half and won 69-57 in a campus-site game as part of Duke's Blue Devil Classic on Tuesday night at Tom Gola Arena.
Daeshon Shepherd scored 22 points to lead La Salle to a 3-0 start on the season. The Explorers, who had previously beaten Drexel and Northeastern at home, also received 13 points from Khalil Brantley and 12 each from Jhamir Brickus and Andres Marrero. They held the Bison to 27% shooting in the second half and built a lead of as many as 19 before the Bison closed the game on a 10-3 run.
Forrest's 27 points came on 7-for-14 shooting from the field, 4-for-7 from the 3-point arc, and 9-for-11 from the foul line. Noah Williamson added 10 points and seven rebounds for the Bison.
The Bison led for more than 11 minutes in the first half and by as many as five after Forrest's runner made it 17-12 with 6:58 remaining. Those would be their final points for the next three minutes, however, as 3-pointers by Marrero and Brantley keyed an 8-0 La Salle run and put the hosts in front 20-17.
La Salle shot 42.6% to Bucknell's 37.5% in the game. The Explorers were 8-for-26 from the arc compared to Bucknell's 6-for-21. La Salle outrebounded Bucknell 40-35 and committed only 11 turnovers while forcing 17.

Bucknell vs. Duke Series Notes

Bucknell and Duke have met three times previously, with the Blue Devils winning all three in Durham.
Jan. 4, 1960 — #18 Duke 72, Bucknell 36: This was Bucknell's very first game against a team ranked in the Associated Press Poll (the poll originated in 1948-49). The men from Lewisburg were outmatched in this one, shooting just 25% (15-60) from the field while getting outrebounded 60-23. Dave Evans led Bucknell with 12 points, while John Frye led four Duke players in double figures with 12.
Jan. 9, 1984 — Duke 84, Bucknell 67: Bucknell finished 24-5 in 1983-84, but this was one of the losses. Cal Puriefoy led the Bison with 18 points. Johnny Dawkins scored 18 points, Mark Alarie had 16 points and 11 rebounds, and Jay Bilas scored 12 points for the Blue Devils, who were 12-1 but unranked at the time. They would enter the AP poll in mid-February and finished the season No. 14.
Jan. 2, 2006 — #1 Duke 84, Bucknell 50: Much like the 1984 meeting, this was one of only five losses all season for the Bison, who went on to win a school-record 27 games and make the NCAA Tournament as a No. 9 seed. Three of the team's losses that year came against NCAA #1 seeds (Duke, Villanova, Memphis). Chris McNaughton paced the Bison with 15 points and then-freshman Jason Vegostky added 12 on 4-for-5 3-point shooting. Current head coach John Griffin III, then a sophomore, had five points in 14 minutes off the bench for Bucknell. Shelden Williams had 23 points and J.J. Redick 22 for the Blue Devils.

Bucknell vs. The ACC

Bucknell has an 11-55 record against the 15 teams that now make up the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Bison are 9-18 against Pittsburgh, 1-2 vs. Virginia, 1-10 vs. Syracuse, 0-8 vs. Wake Forest, 0-3 vs. Notre Dame, 0-3 vs. Duke, 0-2 vs. Boston College, 0-2 vs. Clemson, 0-2 vs. Miami, 0-2 vs. North Carolina State, 0-1 vs. North Carolina, 0-1 vs. Virginia Tech and 0-1 vs. Florida State.
Bucknell has two all-time victories against teams that were in the ACC at the time of the game. The Bison defeated Virginia 99-81 on Jan. 27, 1961 and South Carolina 67-65 on Dec. 30, 1958.

Who's Got Next?

Bucknell returns home on Monday night to face Southern Indiana in the final campus-site game of the Blue Devil Classic.
This will be the first-ever meeting between the Bison and the Screaming Eagles. Southern Indiana is in its second season as a Division I program and a member of the Ohio Valley Conference. USI dropped its first three games of the season to Saint Louis (75-63), Michigan State (74-51) and Chicago State (78-67) before beating Division II Tiffin 68-65 on Tuesday. They play at La Salle on Saturday night before continuing on to Bucknell on Monday and then to Duke the following Friday.

Men's Basketball Visits No. 9 Duke Friday Evening

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Players Mentioned

Pip Ajayi

Josh Bascoe

Quin Berger

Elvin Edmonds IV

Jack Forrest

Brandon McCreesh

Patrick O'Brien

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Jake van der Heijden

Noah Williamson

Men's Basketball Visits No. 9 Duke Friday Evening

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Pip Ajayi

Josh Bascoe

Quin Berger

Elvin Edmonds IV

Jack Forrest

Brandon McCreesh

Patrick O'Brien

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Jake van der Heijden

Noah Williamson

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