Men's Basketball Travels to Boston Looking to Continue Strong Recent Form

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- The Bucknell men's basketball squad has played some of its best basketball of the season since the calendar turned to February. In five games this month, the Bison are 3-2 with all five games coming against teams in the top half of the Patriot League standings. The most dominant of those wins came on Monday night at Sojka Pavilion, when Bucknell shot 53.7 percent and hit 10 of 16 attempts from the 3-point arc in a 73-51 rout of American.

After a rough January, the Bison hope to continue this recent strong form into the final three games of the regular season and then make some noise in the Patriot League Tournament. Next up is a trip to Boston University on Saturday to take on a Terriers squad that is also looking to make a move out of the bottom four in the standings. Boston University is 5-10 in league play, one game ahead of Bucknell. The Terriers have dropped their last two, one in overtime at Lafayette and the other a 71-69 loss to Holy Cross on Wednesday.

The Bison and Terriers last met all the way back on Jan. 2 at Sojka Pavilion. Bucknell got out to a great start and led by as many as 13 in the first half, but Boston University made a big second-half charge and left with a 69-61 win.

GAME DIGEST
What: Bucknell (11-17, 4-11 PL) at Boston University (12-16, 5-10 PL)
Where: Case Gym, Boston, Mass.
When: Saturday, Feb. 18, 1 p.m.
Streaming: ESPN+
Local Radio: The Valley (100.9 FM)
Internet Audio: BucknellBison.com
Live Stats: G oTerriers.com
COMPLETE GAME NOTES

Bucknell Tentative Starters
G: Xander Rice (14.4 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 3.7 apg)
G: Jack Forrest (9.3 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 1.4 apg)
F: Ian Motta (5.0 ppg, 2.4 rpg, 0.7 apg)
F: Alex Timmerman (11.1 ppg, 6.8 rpg, 1.7 apg)
C: Andre Screen (11.2 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 1.3 bpg)

With a Win over Boston University, Bucknell Would ...

... gain a split of the season series with the Terriers and improve to 12-17 on the season.
... win its fourth game in the last six.
... snap a four-game losing streak at Case Gym.
... improve to 15-10 all-time against the Terriers.

Headlines

Bucknell has won three of its last five games and is playing good basketball heading into the final week of the season. Three games remain in the regular season: at Boston University and Lehigh followed by a home Senior Day matchup with Lafayette on Feb. 25.
The Bison and Terriers have similar profiles, and in fact were just one spot apart — Boston University 288 and Bucknell 289 — in Ken Pomeroy's rankings through Wednesday's games. The two teams are also just one spot apart on the Patriot League leaderboard in scoring offense (Bucknell 5th, Boston 6th), scoring defense (Boston 4th, Bucknell 5th), rebound margin (Bucknell 3rd, Boston 4th), made 3-pointers per game (both teams T-6th), and 3-point defense (Boston 6th, Bucknell 7th).
Bucknell and Boston University have work to do to escape the bottom four in the Patriot League standings, which would necessitate playing a first-round tournament game on Feb. 28. Both teams have a chance to play at home, however, as the No. 7 and 8 seeds host opening-round contests. Boston University is tied for eighth place with Loyola at 5-10 and owns the head-to-head tiebreaker thanks to a sweep of the Greyhounds, while the Bison are just a game back at 4-11.
Bucknell's four Patriot League wins consist of season sweeps of Army and American, two teams currently in the top five in the standings. Most recently, the Bison handled American 73-51 at home on Monday night. Bucknell went 10-for-16 from the 3-point arc in that game after a 9-for-13 showing in the win at Bender Arena two weeks earlier. The Bison shot 65.5% from downtown against American but just 28.5% against the rest of the league.
Bucknell just completed a run of five straight games against teams in the top half of the Patriot League standings and went 3-2 in those games. And in the 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 now leads the Patriot League in blocked shots at 4.0 per game after totaling 31 rejections in the last four contests. Andre Screen is second in the league with 1.3 blocks per game. He has blocked a shot in eight straight games and has 16 over that span.
Senior Xander Rice became the 45th member of Bucknell's 1,000-point club on Feb. 8 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 fifth at 14.4 ppg.
Since moving to the point guard spot as part of a starting lineup shuffle four games ago, Rice has 19 assists and only seven turnovers.
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 enjoyed another 25-point night against American on Monday and has averaged 13.5 ppg since joining the starting unit.
Screen is 25-for-33 (.758) from the field over the last four games and is now shooting 66.3% in Patriot League play. That is the best mark in the league, just ahead of Lehigh's Dominic Parolin at 65.1%.
Boston University is coming off two straight close road losses on the heels of a two-game winning streak. The Terriers lost 69-65 in overtime at Lafayette last Saturday and 71-69 at in-state rival Holy Cross on Wednesday. In an odd bit of trivia, Boston University's last two games against Lafayette have gone to overtime, while Bucknell's last four games against the Leopards have required OT.
The Terriers lead the Patriot League in free-throw shooting at 74.4% but have struggled from the 3-point arc, where they rank 10th in the league at 32.1%.
Boston University features the league's fourth-leading scorer in Walter Whyte, who averages 14.4 ppg. White has scored at least 16 points in four straight games, and in the last two tallied 20 against Lafayette and 17 against Holy Cross. White's 325 field-goal attempts are 85 more than any other terrier.
Jonas Harper, who led the Terriers with 17 points in the first meeting with Bucknell, also scores in double figures at 10.3 ppg and leads the team with 37 steals.
The Terriers returned 14 of 17 players from last year's squad that won 22 games, including a victory over UNC Greensboro in the College Basketball Invitational. The Terriers did lose the 2022 Patriot League Player of the Year Sukhmail Mathon and all-league guard Javante McCoy. This is still the league's oldest team, however, with three graduate students, a senior, and a junior in the projected starting lineup.
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 has been 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-Boston University game will be streamed on ESPN+, with Doug Jones and Brian Maurer on the call from Case Gym.
"Voice of the Bison" Doug Birdsong 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 GoTerriers.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Bucknell vs. Boston University Series Notes

Bucknell and Boston University have met 24 times previously in men's basketball, and the Bison have a 14-10 lead in the series.
Bucknell is 7-5 at home in the series, 6-5 on the road and 1-0 at neutral sites. In games played in Boston, Bucknell is 2-1 at Agganis Arena and 4-4 at Case Gym. The Bison were once 4-0 at Case Gym, but have since lost four straight there.
The two teams met for the first time at the 2005 Cable Car Classic at Santa Clara. The Bison won that one 63-57.
The Bison and Terriers split last year's series, with the home team winning both contests. Boston University won 63-61 on New Year's Day at Case Gym, and Bucknell returned the favor with an 89-78 win on Senior Day at Sojka Pavilion. That snapped a four-game series losing streak.
Last year's Patriot League opener came right down to the final possession. Bucknell trailed by one point in the closing seconds, but Andrew Funk's potential go-ahead jumper came up short. Funk did have 25 points in the game to lead the Bison. Sukhmail Mathon had a huge day for the Terriers with 21 points and 18 rebounds.
Funk enjoyed his Senior Day with 15 points, five rebounds, and five assists as Bucknell turned in one of its best performances of the season. Xander Rice led the team with 19 points, and Elvin Edmonds IV (13), Alex Timmerman (13), and Andre Screen (10) also hit double figures. Mathon paced Boston University with 17 points and 13 rebounds.
Bucknell built a 13-point first-half lead in this year's first meeting with Boston University all the way back on Jan. 2 at Sojka Pavilion, but the Terriers started the second half on a 30-12 run and went on to win 69-61. Bucknell shot 51.9% in the first half but just 33.3% in the second. Timmerman led the Bison with 14 points and Rice added 10, while Jonas Harper led the Terriers with 17.

Notable Numbers

Through 27 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.

Scoring Defense Opp. FG% Opp 3FG%
2021-22 79.4 .466 .373
2022-23 68.1 .434 .349

Bucknell had gone 13 straight games without hitting 10 3-pointers in a game but has now done it in two of the last three. On the heels of a deep 3-point shooting slump, the Bison have now hit 45.2% (42-93) over the last five games.
Bucknell has held nine of its 27 opponents under 40% from the field this season and is 7-2 in those games. Bucknell is 4-16 when the opponent shoots 40% or better.
Andre Screen's 79 career blocked shots are tied for 10th-most in Bucknell history alongside Bo Heiden. He needs one more to catch Chris McNaughton for ninth place.
Xander Rice has 128 career 3-pointers and is now 18th on Bucknell's all-time list.
Rice needs 20 more assists to join Bucknell's career top-10 chart. He currently has 312.
Rice's .836 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 49 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 56.5% from the foul line at Sojka Pavilion, and their overall 63.2% mark on the season is the lowest in the nation. Just to show how fluky that stat can be, last season Bison opponents shot 74.9% from the free-throw line, which was the 35th-highest mark in the country.

Last Time Out

Jack Forrest matched his career high with 25 points, 18 coming in the second half, and Andre Screen and Xander Rice also had big nights to help Bucknell soar past American 73-51 in front of a boisterous student crowd on Monday night at Sojka Pavilion.
It was a complete performance for Bucknell, which shot 53.7% from the field, including a 10-for-16 showing from the 3-point arc. Defensively, the Bison held American to 42.0% from the field and 3-for-13 from long range, and they piled up a whopping 37-21 rebounding advantage.
Forrest went 10-for-16 from the field and 5-for-7 from the 3-point arc, including three straight threes early in the second half after American had cut into a 10-point halftime deficit with a 6-0 run to start the stanza. Forrest, who also grabbed six rebounds, also scored 25 points in his first start of the season on Jan. 18 at Army, and he tallied 25 against La Salle while playing for Saint Joseph's in 2021.
While Forrest was the second-half catalyst, it was Screen who got the Bison going early. He scored the team's first eight points of the night before finishing 7-for-9 from the field for 15 points. Rice tallied 14 points, including five straight in the final minute of the first half to stretch Bucknell's lead to 33-23.
Reserve guards Elvin Edmonds IV and Josh Adoh provided key minutes off the bench. Edmonds hit three of his four shots for nine points, and Adoh registered eight points, three rebounds, three steals, two assists, and a blocked shot in 18 minutes.

Who's Got Next?

After returning from Boston, the Bison head back out on the road to face Lehigh on Wednesday. The Mountain Hawks defeated Bucknell 72-64 at Sojka Pavilion on Jan. 5.

Men's Basketball Travels to Boston Looking to Continue Strong Recent Form

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Josh Adoh

Elvin Edmonds IV

Jack Forrest

Andrew Funk

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Men's Basketball Travels to Boston Looking to Continue Strong Recent Form

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Josh Adoh

Elvin Edmonds IV

Jack Forrest

Andrew Funk

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

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