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Franklin College visits Founders Hall this afternoon as the Bluffton College men’s basketball team attempts to cap off the regular season in winning fashion and continue to add to the incredible story of the 2000-2001 season. Celebrating Senior Day today, a BC win coupled with an Anderson victory over league-leader Manchester will vault Bluffton to a share of the HCAC regular season title with Hanover and up to two other teams depending on the outcome of the other games around the HCAC today. However, a BC loss today could send the Beavers down to as low as a fifth place finish in the HCAC which would force Bluffton to go on the road for the first round of the league tournament which tips off Tuesday night.
Bluffton tied a school record Wednesday night by notching their tenth win of the season in Founders Hall as the Beavers posted a dramatic 86-82 victory over Anderson, which entered the game riding a five-game winning streak. The win was Bluffton’s 16th of the season, equaling Head Coach Guy Neal’s highest single-season win total (BC went 16-10 in 1991-92) and moved up to a tie for the third-best win total in the history of BC basketball (see page 30 in today’s program).
Against Anderson, Bluffton trailed 80-75 with 2:02 left in the game, but the Beavers went on an 11-2 scoring run to end the game and register the four-point win. Ben Coole scored a game-high 23 points and grabbed six rebounds, while Travis Elsass collected 22 points and three steals. Freshman Scott Remaklus nailed a 68-foot trey as the first half clock expired to break the Bluffton freshman 3-point record as he now has 42 treys this season topping the mark of 41 set by Dave Sheldon during the 1994-95 season. Remaklus drained the record-breaking 3-pointer from the left wing area of the opposite 3-point line just before the buzzer sounded as the crowd of more than 800 fans went wild. According to several long-time followers of BC basketball it was the longest shot in memory ever made in Founders Hall during an intercollegiate game.
Bluffton made history at Franklin on Jan. 17 when the Beavers came back from a 28-point deficit with less than 12 minutes left in the game to pull off a stunning 99-96 win in overtime. Rod Overmyer scored 24 points in the final 12 minutes in the game and overtime as BC went on a 28-8 scoring run to claw back into the game and win their first ever HCAC game away from Founders Hall. The comeback is a new BC record and is being researched by the NCAA statistics department to determine if it is a Division III national record.
After three straight trips to the NCAA national tournament, Franklin has a totally different view of the HCAC standings this season as the Grizzlies are in the league’s last place slot. Coming into this season FC had won 67 of its last 86 games, but Head Coach Kerry Prather graduated all five starters from last year’s team and has just three substitutes coming off the bench that average double-digit minutes per game. Franklin has yet to win an HCAC game on the road this season and has dropped three league games in overtime. The Grizzlies are the best shooting team in the league, however, ranking first in total field goal percentage (.500), 3-point field goal percentage (.409) and free throw percentage (.803). They don’t launch the trey often (fewest attempts in HCAC), but when they do look for Jake Sappenfield and Justin Castelli to be the ones shooting (they have combined for 64 3-pointers).
This is the third meeting this season between Bluffton and Franklin, as the two schools met in November at the North Central College Tip-off Tournament in Naperville, IL. BC won that contest, as well, 97-91. Remaklus led BC with 22 points and hit five 3-pointers as the Beavers shot 68% from the floor in the second half.
Bluffton leads the HCAC in 3-pointers attempted and made and are led in scoring by Elsass (14.7 ppg) and Overmyer (14.1 ppg), who rank 4-5 in the league in scoring, respectively. Overmyer is also tops in free throw percentage (.871, 61-70), while Franklin’s Josh Quattrochi leads in field goal shooting (.639) and Jed Zarse is the conference’s top shot blocker (1.78 bpg).
Bluffton senior Jeremy Roberts will return to the court today after having been sidelined since December 28 with a knee injury. His status is still listed as day-t-day.
