LOUISVILLE, Ky.—The No. 1 Bellarmine University Knights suffered their third defeat of the season as they fell 71-68 to No. 13 Southern Indiana on Saturday night in the semifinals of the SCHEELS Great Lakes Valley Conference Championship.

The Screaming Eagles jumped out to a 13-point lead in the game's first eight minutes and 20 seconds as the Knights managed to hit just one of their first 10 shot attempts.  USI would go on to extend the lead to 16 points by the first half's 7:45 mark.  

Bellarmine answered with a 22-4 run to trim the USI lead to just two with 2:48 remaining, but Southern Indiana closed on a 7-2 run to go into halftime with a 39-32 margin.

The Eagles opened the second half with five unanswered points to extend their lead to 12, prompting Bellarmine Coach Scott Davenport to call a quick timeout.  The maneuver seemed to work as back to back dunks by Keisten Jones and Luke Sprague trimmed the lead back to single digits.

The Knights kept whittling away at the lead, and finally tied the score on a pair of Sprague free throws at the 12:27 mark.  After the teams traded 3-point baskets,  USI surged ahead by five, but the Knights battled back and finally took their first lead of the game on a Jeremy Kendle layup with 4:58 remaining.

The lead see-sawed back and forth  until USI's Lawrence Thomas hit a rainbow pull-up jumper after a Bellarmine turnover to give the Screaming Eagles a 3-point advantage with just 25 seconds to play.

The Knights cut it to one on a Jeremy Kendle layup with just four seconds remaining, then Jelani Johnson was whistled for an intentional foul on the inbounds play.  USI's Isaac McClure hit both free throws then the Screaming Eagles retained possession on the intentional foul call. However, USI could not inbound the ball and turned it over on a 5-second call.

Bellarmine got the ball to GLVC Player of the Year Braydon Hobbs in the right corner, and after losing his footing, got off a pretty good look at a potential game-tying 3-pointer, but the attempt glanced off the rim and  USI came away with the victory.

Davenport said the game came down to rebounding, where the Knights lost the battle of the boards 38-21.  “It's not rocket science,” Davenport  said. “They shoot 13 more times than we do because they just keep shooting until they make it."

“I thought we played good defense,” Davenport added, “but we could not, or would not rebound the basketball.” To illustrate his point, he referred to the final statistics that showed in 200 minutes Bellarmine came up with 21 rebounds, whereas in just in just 71 minutes of combined playing time, USI's McClure and (Kenyon) Smith claimed 24 board between them.

Bellarmine has given up a rebound margin of greater than 10 three times this season and each time, it resulted in a loss.
Kendle posted 22 points to lead all scorers, while Chris Dowe added 17 points for the Knights.  Hobbs posted a career high seven steals on the night.

Southern Indiana placed four players in double digits, led by Brandon Hogg's 20.  McClure posted a double-double with 18 points and 15 rebounds.

After their slow start, Bellarmine came back to shoot 46.8 percent overall from the field.  And aside from rebounding, their defensive numbers were very good:  17 forced turnovers, 10 steals, eight blocked shots while giving up just 41.7 percent shooting.

The loss dashed the hopes for a Bellarmine “3-peat” of GLVC Championships, and now the Knights must await their fate from the NCAA on the upcoming tournament.  It's widely speculated that Bellarmine will be No. 1 seed and host the NCAA Midwest Regional.  “I think our body of work speaks for itself, but I don't get to make that call,” Davenport said about tournament seedings.

The NCAA will reveal the Division II field of 64 in a live selection show webcast on NCAA.com at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 4.
 
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