Men's Basketball Hosts American Monday Night on CBS Sports Network

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- A busy and difficult stretch for the Bucknell men's basketball team continues on Monday night when the Bison host American in a nationally televised game on CBS Sports Network. This will be Bucknell's second game in three days and third in the last six, and it will be the team's fifth straight game against a team sitting in the top half of the Patriot League standings.

The first 1,000 fans entering Sojka Pavilion will receive a free water bottle, courtesy of Geisinger.

The Bison have dropped their last two to Navy and Colgate on the heels of consecutive wins over American and Army. The 78-71 win over the Eagles on Feb. 1 was one of Bucknell's best offensive performances of the season. The Bison shot 55.6 percent from the field -- their highest figure of the season against a Division I opponent -- and went 9-for-13 from the 3-point arc. American also shot 50.0 percent in a game that Bucknell led by as many as 19 in the second half.

Bucknell and Colgate were all knotted up at 34-all early in the second half on Saturday, but the Raiders took advantage of some turnovers and used an 11-0 run to pull away and eventually won 76-56. That, coupled with second-place Lehigh's loss to Loyola later in the evening, cliched the regular-season title for Colgate.

GAME DIGEST
What: American (15-10, 7-7 PL) at Bucknell (10-17, 3-11 PL)
Where: Sojka Pavilion, Lewisburg, Pa.
When: Monday, Feb. 13, 7 p.m.
TV: CBS Sports Network
Local Radio: The Valley (100.9 FM)
Internet Audio: BucknellBison.com
Live Stats: BucknellBison.com
TICKETS
COMPLETE GAME NOTES
DIGITAL GAME PROGRAM

Bucknell Tentative Starters
G: Xander Rice (14.4 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 3.7 apg)
G: Jack Forrest (8.4 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 1.5 apg)
F: Ian Motta (5.2 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 0.7 apg)
F: Alex Timmerman (11.5 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 1.7 apg)
C: Andre Screen (11.0 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 1.3 bpg)

With a Win over American, Bucknell Would ...

... sweep the season series from the Eagles and improve to 11-17 on the season.
... defeat the Eagles for the thrid straight time dating back to last season and improve to 47-27 all-time against them.
... improve to 148-43 all-time at home against Patriot League opponents.

Headlines

Bucknell dropped a pair of games to Navy and Colgate last week on the heels of a two-game winning streak. The Bison are in the midst of a tough stretch, as this will be their fifth straight game against a team in the top half of the Patriot League standings.
Bucknell is 2-2 in this recent run against upper-division teams, with the wins coming at American and at home against Army. In last week's two losses, the Bison had a seven-point lead in the second half at Navy and were tied early in the second half with first-place Colgate, but both games slipped away late due in large part to a rash of turnovers.
Bucknell has two home games remaining on the schedule and is looking for better play on its home floor. The Bison have been dominant at Sojka Pavilion since it opened 20 years ago, but after a strong start they have struggled shooting the ball at home, where they are 1-6 in league play. In Patriot League home games, Bucknell has shot 41.0% from the field and 26.4% from the 3-point arc while scoring 61.4 ppg. By contrast, in conference road games, the Bison have shot 44.6% from the field, 34.5% from the arc, and scored 66.7 ppg.
Bucknell played one of its best offensive games of the season in the first meeting with American on Feb. 1 at Bender Arena. The Bison had 20 points by the first media timeout and shot 55.6% on the night, including a 9-for-13 clip from the 3-point arc, and won 78-71. Bucknell built a 19-point second-half lead before holding off a late Eagles rally.
Bucknell and American rank 1-2 in the Patriot League in blocked shots. The Eagles block 3.92 shots per game, just ahead of Bucknell's 3.89. AU's Johnny O'Neil leads the league with 1.6 blocks per game, while Bucknell's Andre Screen is second with 1.3. Screen blocked four shots in Saturday's game against Colgate.
Senior Xander Rice became the 45th member of Bucknell's 1,000-point club on Wednesday at Navy. He entered the game needing only three points for 1,000 and hit the mark with a deep 3-pointer about six minutes into the contest. Rice has ranked among the league's top scorers all season and is currently sixth at 14.4 ppg.
Since moving to the point guard spot as part of a starting lineup shuffle three games ago, Rice has 15 assists and only five turnovers in that span.
Jack Forrest entered the starting lineup for the first time at Army and had a huge night. The Saint Joseph's transfer matched his career high with 25 points, including 18 in a sensational first half, in the 68-66 win at West Point. Forrest finished 9-for-15 from the field and 5-for-7 from 3-point distance. His previous 25-point game came against La Salle while playing for Saint Joseph's in 2021. Forrest has averaged 12.1 ppg since joining the starting unit.
Screen is 18-for-24 from the field over the last three games and is now shooting 65.1% in Patriot League play. That is the best mark in the league, just ahead of Lehigh's Dominic Parolin at 65.0%.
American is coming off a 74-66 home loss to Holy Cross on Saturday. The Eagles have dropped three of their last four, but the win in that stretch was a 61-60 verdict over Colgate, which handed the Raiders their only loss in Patriot League play to date. The Eagles are now 7-7 in the league and tied for fifth place with Lafayette. Those two teams split their two meetings earlier in the year.
American has three players averaging in double figures led by Matt Rogers at 12.8 ppg, followed by O'Neil at 10.5 ppg and Colin Smalls at 10.2 ppg. Smalls paced the Eagles with 16 points off the bench in Saturday's loss to Holy Cross.
Bucknell finished 9-23 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.

How to Get the Game

The Bucknell-American game will be nationally televised on CBS Sports Network. Jason Knapp (pxp) and Mo Cassara (analyst) will have the call.
Doug Birdsong and former Bison assistant coach Terry Conrad will handle the local radio broadcast on The Valley, WVLY 100.9 FM.
The audio feed is also available online free of charge via BucknellBison.com.
Live in-game statistics can be accessed at BucknellBison.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Bucknell vs. American Series Notes

Bucknell has an overall 46-27 lead in an all-time series with American that includes some historic dates.
The very first meeting on Jan. 14, 1939 also happened to be the first game ever played in Davis Gym (AU won 38-33). Coincidentally, American was also the opponent for the very last game ever played in Davis Gym on Jan. 11, 2003 (a 63-52 Bison win).
As Patriot League rivals, Bucknell leads 31-15, including victories in the 2005 and 2006 PL Tournament semifinals.
Bucknell has won 26 of 34 series meetings in Lewisburg, including 18 out of 21 at Sojka Pavilion, but the Bison are just 12-12 at Bender Arena.
Bucknell and American split last year's season series, with the home team winning both times.
American won last year's first meeting 63-55 in D.C. Colin Smalls scored 16 of his 18 points in the second half to lead the Eagles. Andrew Funk scored 20 points and was Bucknell's lone double-digit scorer.
In the rematch at Sojka Pavilion, Andre Screen scored 20 points and the Bison survived a late AU flurry in a 68-66 victory. Funk tallied 16 points and Xander Rice added 11 for Bucknell, which started the game 15-for-17 from the field on the way to a 37-20 lead. The Bison still led by 15 at 66-51 with 6:20 to play, but the Eagles scored the game's final 11 points and had a shot to win it, but Elijah Stephens's corner three was off the mark at the buzzer. Stacy Beckton Jr. paced American with 18 points.
Rice led all scorers with 23 points in Bucknell's 78-71 win at Bender Arena on Feb. 1. Ian Motta added 16 points, Jack Forrest had 14 points and Screen 10 for the Bison, whose 55.6 FG% is their best of the season against a Division I opponent. American saw its two-game winning streak come to an end, despite shooting 50.0% from the field. The Eagles were just 4-for-15 from the 3-point arc but did plenty of damage on backdoor cuts out of their Princeton-style offense. AU scored 48 points in the paint to Bucknell's 32, but the Bison had a 20-10 edge in points off turnovers.

Notable Numbers

Through 26 games in 2022-23, Bucknell has been much-improved defensively over last season, when the Bison struggled to get stops. Bucknell ranks No. 2 in the Patriot League in field-goal percentage defense.

Scoring Defense   Opp. FG%     Opp 3FG%
2021-22     79.4     .466 .373
2022-23    68.8 .434 .351

Bucknell has held nine of its 26 opponents under 40% from the field this season and is 7-2 in those games. Bucknell is 3-16 when the opponent shoots 40% or better.
Xander Rice has 126 career 3-pointers and is now tied for 18th with Valter Karavanic on Bucknell's all-time list.
Rice's .835 career free-throw percentage would be the fourth-best in school history.
Rice was named Tournament MVP of the Ocean Bracket at the Sunshine Slam during Thanksgiving Week. On Dec. 18 against Merrimack, he was held to 11 points, but he did hand out nine assists without a turnover. Rice, who ranks fourth in the Patriot League in assist/TO ratio (1.7), is one of only 45 Division I players — Lafayette's CJ Fulton and Navy's Sean Yoder are the only other Patriot League players to do it — to log nine or more assists with no turnovers in a game this season, and he is only the fourth different Bison to do it in the last 18 years.
Bucknell's "free throw defense" has been terrific this season. Opponents are shooting only 57.2% from the foul line at Sojka Pavilion, and their overall 63.8% mark on the season is third-lowest in the nation.

Last Time Out

Bucknell employed a balanced scoring attack with 10 players making at least one field goal, but the Bison were held back by a wide disparity in turnovers and fell 76-56 to first-place Colgate on Saturday afternoon at Sojka Pavilion.
Andre Screen recorded 10 points, six rebounds, and four blocked shots for the Bison, who played one of the league's top four teams for the fourth straight game and went 2-2 in that stretch. Tucker Richardson scored 16 of his 19 points in the first half, and Keegan Records scored 13 of his 17 in the second half to help the Raiders break open a tight game.
Bucknell led for most of the game's first 17 minutes, with Colgate taking its first lead of the day on a Richardson 3-pointer with 2:57 let in the opening half. The Bison trailed 34-31 at the intermission, tied the game briefly on a Jack Forrest 3-pointer to open up the second-half scoring, and then saw Colgate take control with an 11-0 run.
Bucknell shot 42.3% overall and went 7-for-20 from the 3-point arc. Rice and Forrest scored eight points apiece for the Bison, who also received 22 points from the bench. Freshman Josh Fulton played a strong 13 minutes, collecting three points, a rebound, a steal, and four assists.

Who's Got Next?

Following Monday night's game, the Bison will have only three games remaining in the regular season, with the next two coming on the road.
Bucknell will have some extra rest before heading to Boston University on Saturday for a 1 p.m. start. The Bison will then visit Lehigh next Wednesday before wrapping up the regular season at home on Senior Day against Lafayette on Feb. 25.

Men's Basketball Hosts American Monday Night on CBS Sports Network

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Players Mentioned

Jack Forrest

Josh Fulton

Andrew Funk

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Men's Basketball Hosts American Monday Night on CBS Sports Network

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Players Mentioned

Jack Forrest

Josh Fulton

Andrew Funk

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

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