Men's Basketball Back Home Monday vs. Southern Indiana

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Bucknell returns to the friendly confines of Sojka Pavilion on Monday night to take on an unfamiliar foe. The Bison will square off against Southern Indiana for the very first time, with coverage of the 7 p.m. game on ESPN+. The game is Bucknell's third of three in Duke's Blue Devil Challenge, and the Bison are looking for their first win in the tournament after falling on the road to La Salle and No. 9 Duke.

Bucknell fell to 1-4 in a tough early stretch after Friday's 90-60 loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Bison brought home many positives from that game, despite the final score. They executed well offensively for much of the night and were right in the game down by just four with 3:30 left in the first half, but Duke broke away with an 11-0 run to close the half. Jack Forrest continued to have the hot hand for the Bison, scoring a team-high 17 points on the heels of his 27-point performance at La Salle.

Bucknell's opponent on Monday will be making its first trip to Lewisburg. Southern Indiana, which dropped a one-point game at La Salle on Saturday to fall to 1-4 on the season, is a former Division II power that is now in its second season at the Division I level. The Screaming Eagles are a member of the Ohio Valley Conference, and they were invited to the College Basketball Invitational postseason tournament last season.

After Monday's game, the Bison are back on the road for two more games later this week against St. Bonaventure and Marist. The next home game will be on Wednesday, Nov. 29 against Princeton.

GAME DIGEST
What: Southern Indiana (1-4) at Bucknell (1-4)
Where: Sojka Pavilion, Lewisburg, Pa. | BUY TICKETS
When: Monday, Nov. 20, 7 p.m.
Streaming: ESPN+
Local Radio: The Valley (100.9 FM)
Internet Audio: BucknellBison.com
Live Stats: BucknellBison.com
COMPLETE GAME NOTES

With a Win over Southern Indiana, Bucknell Would ...

... improve to 2-4 overall and 2-0 at home this season.
... improve to 208-78 all-time at Sojka Pavilion.
... finish 1-2 in the Blue Devil Challenge.
... improve to 5-8 all-time against teams from the state of Indiana. The Bison have two wins over DePauw and one each against Purdue and Ball State.
... improve to 2-3 all-time against the Ohio Valley Conference.

Headlines

After playing four straight road games in a nine-day span, the Bison are glad to be back at Sojka Pavilion for a Monday-night affair against Southern Indiana. This game is part of Duke's Blue Devil Challenge, a three-game, campus-site MTE. Bucknell has dropped road games to La Salle and Duke as part of the event, while the Screaming Eagles suffered a 79-78 loss at La Salle on Saturday afternoon. They will head to Duke on Friday to wrap up the tournament.
Bucknell's trip to Durham was productive. Even though the final result was a 90-60 loss to the ninth-ranked Blue Devils, the Bison played very well in long stretches. It was just a four-point game with 3:30 left in the first half, but Duke scored the final 11 points of the stanza and then opened the second half on a 23-7 run to break the game open.
Jack Forrest is averaging 22.0 ppg in the Blue Devil Challenge. He had a career-high 27 points at La Salle on Tuesday followed by a 17-point performance at Duke. Forrest scored 15 of those 17 in the first half, and in fact he scored 15 straight Bison points in one stretch.
Forrest leads the team and ranks second in the Patriot League in scoring at 16.8 ppg. He leads the conference in both 3-pointers per game (3.0) and minutes per game (35.8).
Noah Williamson (10.6) and Elvin Edmonds IV (10.0) are also scoring in double figures on the season, although Edmonds is out of the lineup for several weeks with an injury.
With Edmonds unavailable, Josh Bascoe earned his first start of the season on Friday at hostile Cameron Indoor Stadium. Bascoe, who had been playing well in a reserve role early in the season, tallied eight assists and only three turnovers in 37 minutes against heavy pressure. It was Bascoe's second eight-assist game of the season, and he ranks third in the Patriot League with 4.8 assists per game.
Rebounding has been a key stat for the Bison thus far. They were +20 on the boards in their Nov. 11 win at Niagara, but in the four losses Bucknell is -64 on the glass. Last time out, Bucknell was outrebounded 46-27 at Duke, leading to a Blue Devils 23-0 edge in second-chance points.
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. John Griffin III 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.
Southern Indiana is in its second year as a Division I program. Men's basketball was the first varsity sport created by USI in 1970-71, and the Screaming Eagles went on to become a Division II power. They won the 1995 NCAA Division II National Championship, and they captured four NCAA II Midwest Regional Championships and 12 GLVC Championships. The Screaming Eagles made 28 trips to the NCAA Division II Tournament and have won over 1,000 games.
Southern Indiana finished 16-17 last year. The Screaming Eagles had a winning record at the end of the regular season but then fell to SIU-Edwardsville in the first round of the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament and to San Jose State in the first round of the College Basketball Invitational.
This year's USI squad is off to a 1-4 start, with the lone win coming against former Division II rival Tiffin on Tuesday. Their losses have been at the hands of Saint Louis, Michigan State, Chicago State, and La Salle. The latter was a narrow 79-78 setback at La Salle on Saturday. The Screaming Eagles fell despite shooting 53.3% from the field, outrebounding the Explorers 32-29, and committing only 11 turnovers.
AJ Smith leads the team in scoring (13.0) and rebounding (9.0) after collecting 15 points and eight boards against La Salle. Jeremiah Hernandez also scores 13.0 ppg. USI shoots under 30% from 3-point distance, but the Bison will have to keep an eye on Jack Mielke, who is 12-for-26 on the season.

How to Get the Game

The Bucknell-Southern Indiana game will be streamed on ESPN+. Doug Birdsong and former Bucknell assistant coach Terry Conrad will call the action from Sojka Pavilion.
Joe Vasile 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 BucknellBison.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Last Time Out

Led by the hot-shooting tandem of Jack Forrest and Ruot Bijiek, Bucknell was locked up in a four-point game with No. 9 Duke late in the first half, but the Blue Devils bridged the halftime break with a 22-4 run to propel them to a 90-60 victory on Friday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Forrest finished with 17 points, Bijiek added a season-high 11, and Josh Bascoe dished out eight assists while making his first start of the season in place of injured point guard Elvin Edmonds IV.
Mark Mitchell scored a career-high 20 points for the Blue Devils (3-1), who were coming off a win over No. 18 Michigan State in Chicago. Jared McCain (17), Tyrese Proctor (13), and Kyle Filipowski (10) also hit double figures for a Duke team that shot 49.2% for the game and hit 13 of 34 from 3-point range.
Bucknell played well for extended periods, but Duke answered every run with big spurts of its own. Bijiek and Forrest both canned three 3-pointers apiece in the first half, and they combined to score 26 of Bucknell's 29 points in the opening 20 minutes. But the Blue Devils clamped down defensively in the second half, holding that duo to two points while limiting the Bison to 3-for-12 shooting from the arc.
Bucknell shot 37.0% from the field and finished 9-for-29 from the arc and 11-for-15 from the foul line.

Bucknell vs. Southern Indiana/OVC Series Notes

Bucknell and Southern Indiana will be meeting for the first time on Monday.
Bucknell is 1-3 all-time against teams that were in the Ohio Valley Conference at the time of the game. All three losses came against teams that are no longer members of the OVC (Youngstown State in 1986, Murray State in 1990, Middle Tennessee in 1977), while the win came against Morehead State at Sojka Pavilion early in the 2011-12 season. That 54-50 victory was part of the Legends Classic. The Bison were held to 15 made field goals in the game, but 10 of them were threes. Bryson Johnson hit six of those and led all scorers with 20 points.

Who's Got Next?

Bucknell heads back on the road for two more games later in the week. The Bison visit St. Bonaventure on Wednesday, and after partaking in a Thanksgiving dinner together on Thursday, they will head to Marist for a Saturday afternoon tilt.

Men's Basketball Back Home Monday vs. Southern Indiana

Players Mentioned

Pip Ajayi

Josh Bascoe

Quin Berger

Ruot Bijiek

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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