LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A shorthanded Bellarmine men's basketball team battled the ASUN preseason favorite for a solid half Thursday night at Knights Hall, but ultimately fell to Lipscomb 87-53.
 
The Knights were without Billy Smith (13.3 PPG) and Ben Johnson (11.9 PPG) due to injuries. Both had started all 17 of Bellarmine's games before Thursday. Smith was in uniform, but ultimately did not enter the game.
 
Jack Karasinski led the Knights with 14 points, his 11^th double-digit effort in 12 games as a Knight. Myles Watkins added a career-high 12 points, Kenyon Goodin swiped a career-high four steals and AJ Lux pulled down a career-high seven rebounds in extended minutes.
 
Karasinski scored the Knights' first 13 points just 4:15 into the game. The junior forward started 4-for-4 from the field, 3-for-3 from deep, and swished a pair of free throws, though he scored just one point the rest of the way.
 
The Knights hung around enough to keep the Bisons within reach at the break. A deep shoulder three by Landin Hacker a second before the buzzer helped the Knights keep the deficit at four heading into the locker room at 36-32. Lipscomb shot 45.2 percent in the opening frame to Bellarmine's 37.9 percent.
 
Lipscomb, however, came out of the gate running in the second half, scoring the first 25 points of the stanza to go ahead by 29 at 61-32. The Bisons hit 10 of their first 17 shots in the second while the Knights missed their first 13 and never threatened.
 
Will Pruitt scored 24 points for the Bisons after dropping 27 on the Knights in their last meeting. The senior guard went 9-for-12 from the field and 4-for-7 from deep. Senior forward Jacob Ognacevic recorded his fourth double-double of the season, and his second straight, with 17 points and a whopping 16 rebounds, the most by a single player against Bellarmine this season.
 
For the game, Lipscomb outrebounded the Knights 44-24 and held a 34-20 advantage in the paint while also hitting 15 threes to Bellarmine's seven.
 
Bellarmine next heads to Richmond to face in-state rival Easten Kentucky on Saturday. Tipoff is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET on ESPN+ and ESPN 680/105.7.
 
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