WINONA LAKE, Ind. – The Mid-America Christian University men's basketball team opened their 2018 trip to the NCCAA Division I national championship on Wednesday afternoon, battling the Bluefield College (Va.) Rams in the quarterfinal. The Evangels kept things close for most of the day, but slow shooting in the second half helped the Rams pull away to the upset victory.
The third-seeded Evangels (19-14) shot only 29% from the floor in the second stanza, and Bluefield (18-13) took advantage and pulled away to the 74-58 win. The Rams advance to the semifinals of the Championship, while the Evangels will continue their trip in the consolation bracket.
MACU scored first, 45 seconds into the game, when Keyshawn Perkins grabbed an offensive rebound and laying it back in. Bluefield took the lead at the 17:01 mark of the first half, and the Rams quickly built an 11-5 lead. Bluefield's lead reached seven at the 11:08 mark, but MACU began to whittle away. Zach Sawyer scored with 9:18 left in the first half to cut the deficit to 18-14, and less than a minute later, he connected from long distance to pull MACU to within three at 20-17. Perkins scored with 6:50 on the clock to get MACU within one, and at the 4:51 mark, Chinua Massena buried a 3-pointer to knot the score at 22. Bluefield scored the next five points, and the Rams led for the rest of the half, taking a 35-31 lead into the locker room.
MACU kept things close through the first two minutes of the second half, but then the Evangels went cold from the field. MACU went more than five minutes without scoring as Bluefield went on a 7-0 run to open a 46-35 lead. MACU never got the margin below seven the rest of the way as MACU struggled to shoot the basketball. The Evangels made only nine of 31 shots in the second half, including 2-of-13 from behind the arc. Bluefield kept the Evangels at bay in the waning minutes, and the Rams took the win 74-58.
Jordan Rhodes led the Evangels with 11 points, and Massena added 10 in the game. Perkins scored eight points and grabbed a team-best nine rebounds in the game, and Rhodes added eight rebounds as well. For the game, MACU made 19-of-57 (33.3%) shots from the floor, and 8-of-26 (30.8%) from long range. MACU was also 12-for-17 (70.6%) from the foul line.
The Evangels will now move into the consolation bracket where they will face a rematch of the Central Region championship game. MACU will do battle with College of the Ozarks (22-12) at 11 a.m. central time on Thursday, with the winner advancing to the fifth place game, and the loser playing for seventh place. Both the fifth and seventh place games will take place on Friday.
