Men's Basketball Visits Lehigh Wednesday for Final Regular-Season Road Game

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Bucknell closes out the 2022-23 regular season with a pair of games against longtime Lehigh Valley rivals Lehigh and Lafayette. The Bison head to Lehigh on Wednesday night and then host Lafayette on Senior Day on Saturday afternoon.

Also coming up this week is the final Bucknell Basketball Luncheon of the season. The luncheon is set for Thursday at noon at the Bull Run Tap House on Market Street in Lewisburg. Head coaches Nathan Davis and Trevor Woodruff will be joined by players from the men's and women's teams for lunch and Q&A.

The Bison men's squad has played better basketball of late with three wins in six February games, and they will be looking to continue that trend into the final week of the regular season and postseason. Bucknell will be on the road for a Patriot League Tournament first-round game next Tuesday against an opponent to be determined.

GAME DIGEST
What: Bucknell (11-18, 4-12 PL) at Lehigh (15-12, 10-6 PL)
Where: Stabler Arena, Bethlehem, Pa.
When: Wednesday, Feb. 22, 7 p.m.
Streaming: ESPN+
Local Radio: The Valley (100.9 FM)
Internet Audio: BucknellBison.com
Live Stats: LehighSports.com
COMPLETE GAME NOTES

Bucknell Tentative Starters
G: Xander Rice (14.2 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 3.7 apg)
G: Jack Forrest (9.3 ppg, 3.9 rpg, 1.4 apg)
F: Ian Motta (5.0 ppg, 2.3 rpg, 0.7 apg)
F: Alex Timmerman (11.1 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 1.7 apg)
C: Andre Screen (11.1 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 1.3 bpg)

With a Win over Lehigh, Bucknell Would ...

... gain a split of the season series with the Mountain Hawks and improve to 12-18 on the season.
... win its fourth game in the last seven.
... snap a three-game losing streak to the Mountain Hawks and improve to 112-72 all-time against them.

Headlines

The final week of the regular season has arrived, and Bucknell closes with games against the two Lehigh Valley teams. The Bison travel to Lehigh on Wednesday before hosting Lafayette on Senior Day on Saturday.
In terms of Patriot League Tournament seeding, Bucknell is currently the No. 10 seed and would need two wins and two Loyola losses to climb to No. 9. Regardless, the Bison know they will be opening the tournament on the road on Tuesday, Feb. 28.
Bucknell had one of its most impressive performances of the season last Monday in a 22-point home win over American. The Bison then built a 10-point lead at Boston University on Saturday, but the Terriers finished the game on a 28-8 run on the way to a 77-61 verdict.
Bucknell is 3-3 over its last six games and were in all three of the losses in the second half. 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. Saturday's game in Boston was just a two-point spread with 5:40 to play before the Terriers pulled away.
Bucknell now leads the Patriot League in blocked shots at 3.9 per game after totaling 33 rejections in the last five contests. Andre Screen is second in the league with 1.3 blocks per game. He has blocked a shot in nine straight games and has 17 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 seventh at 14.2 ppg.
Since moving to the point guard spot as part of a starting lineup shuffle four games ago, Rice has 23 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 last Monday and has averaged 13.1 ppg since joining the starting unit.
Screen is 29-for-40 (.725) from the field over the last five games and is now shooting 65.7% in Patriot League play. That is the second-best mark in the league, just behind Colgate's Keegan Records at 65.9%.
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%.
Lehigh vaulted to the top half of the standings with an eight-game winning streak in January. The Mountain Hawks' pace has cooled a bit, as they are 2-4 in the month of February, but they are coming off a 62-59 road win over American on Saturday.
Guards Keith Higgins Jr. (14.9 ppg), Evan Taylor (14.5), and Tyler Whitney-Sidney (13.2) have accounted for 60% of Lehigh's scoring this season. That trio combined for 46 of the team's 62 points in Saturday's win over American, led by Higgins' efficient 18-point game (7-12 FG, 3-5 3FG). In the first meeting against Bucknell back on Jan. 5, those three accounted for 56 of the team's 72 points in Lehigh's 72-64 win.
On the season, Lehigh is the Patriot League's fourth-highest-scoring team at 70.2 ppg, but they rank ninth in scoring defense at 70.0 ppg.
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-Lehigh game will be streamed on ESPN+, with Matt Markus and Ryan McGettin 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 LehighSports.com.
Follow @Bucknell_MBB for in-game updates on Twitter.

Bucknell vs. Lehigh Series Notes

Bucknell has played more games (183) and won more games (111) against Lehigh than any other school. The Bison have a 111-72 lead in a series that originated in 1902.
Since the start of Patriot League play in 1990-91, Bucknell holds a 51-26 advantage, including a 29-10 mark at home.
Lehigh is responsible for snapping Bucknell's 35-game home winning streak against Patriot League foes. The Bison had not lost to a conference opponent at Sojka Pavilion in nearly five years, until the Mountain Hawks won 56-54 in Lewisburg on Jan. 30, 2008.
Lehigh also won the first game ever played in Sojka Pavilion, a 60-56 decision on Jan. 15, 2003. Including that game, Bucknell is 15-9 against the Mountain Hawks in Sojka.
Bucknell is 7-3 against Lehigh in Patriot League Tournament action, including an 81-65 win in the 2017 championship game.
The Bison went 4-0 against Lehigh during the COVID-modified 2020-21 season, as the two teams played four times in the same campaign for the first time.
Lehigh returned the favor by sweeping both games last season. Bucknell could not slow down a Lehigh offense that was clicking at the time, as the Mountain Hawks hit 32 of 58 3-point shots and tallied 183 points in the two contests.
In last year's first meeting, Lehigh handed the Bison their most one-sided loss ever in Sojka Pavilion with a 97-64 verdict. The Mountain Hawks made 18 3-pointers — the most ever by a visiting team in Sojka — with Keith Higgins Jr. and Evan Taylor accounting for 11 of them. Higgins had a huge night for Lehigh with 26 points, nine assists and five rebounds. Andre Screen led the Bison with 17 points.
In the rematch at Stabler Arena, the Bison built a five-point halftime lead, but Lehigh went 9-for-13 from the arc in the second half and pulled away late for an 86-77 win. Center Nic Lynch, who hit three dagger 3-pointers late in the game, tallied 19 points and 11 rebounds for Lehigh. Andrew Funk had 24 points and Screen logged 16 with eight rebounds for the Bison.
In this year's first matchup back on Jan. 5 at Sojka Pavilion, Alex Timmerman had the game of his career with 27 points and 10 rebounds, but the Bison went just 4-for-20 from 3-point range and fell 72-64. Lehigh's high-scoring guard trio of Tyler Whitney-Sidney (23), Evan Taylor (20), and Keith Higgins Jr. (12) combined for 55 of Lehigh's 72 points.

Notable Numbers

Through 28 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    68.4 .436 .354

Bucknell had hit 45.2% (42-93) from 3-point range over the previous five games before going 5-for-20 at Boston University on Saturday.
Andre Screen's 80 career blocked shots are tied for ninth-most in Bucknell history alongside Chris McNaughton. He needs six more to catch Brian Anderson for eighth place.
Xander Rice has 129 career 3-pointers and is now 18th on Bucknell's all-time list.
Rice needs 16 more assists to join Bucknell's career top-10 chart. He currently has 316.
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 63.8% mark on the season is the third-lowest in the nation, behind only Winthrop (.633) and Marshall (.634). 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

Alex Timmerman recorded his fifth double-double of the season with 13 points and 11 rebounds, but Boston University flipped the game around with a 28-8 run over the final nine minutes to take a 77-61 victory over Bucknell on Saturday afternoon at Case Gym.
Ruot Bijiek scored 12 points and Andre Screen added 11 for the Bison, who were coming off a 22-point win over American on Monday. Boston University snapped a two-game losing streak with Walter Whyte leading four in double figures with 16 points.
Bucknell led by as many as 10 in the first half and by four at the break, but Boston University got hot after a slow start to the second stanza. The Terriers missed seven of their first eight shots to start the half and then hit 11 of 13 the rest of the way.
Bucknell shot 42.6% from the field and hit 5 of 20 from the 3-point arc. The Terriers' late flurry pushed their final percentage to 53.3%. Boston University finished 8-for-14 from the 3-point arc and hit 21 of 29 from the foul line, including 12-for-12 in the last nine minutes after some early struggles.
Bucknell outrebounded Boston University 33-26 and limited the Terriers to two offensive boards, but the hosts took good care of the ball with only four turnovers.

Who's Got Next?

Bucknell concludes the regular season on Saturday at home against Lafayette at 2 p.m. The Bison and Leopards have gone to overtime in each of their last four head-to-head clashes, including Lafayette's 74-67 win in Easton back on Jan. 8.
Saturday's game will be Senior Day, with Xander Rice, Alex Timmerman, and Jake van der Heijden all slated to be honored prior to the game.

Men's Basketball Visits Lehigh Wednesday for Final Regular-Season Road Game

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Ruot Bijiek

Jack Forrest

Andrew Funk

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Jake van der Heijden

Men's Basketball Visits Lehigh Wednesday for Final Regular-Season Road Game

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Ruot Bijiek

Jack Forrest

Andrew Funk

Ian Motta

Xander Rice

Andre Screen

Alex Timmerman

Jake van der Heijden

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