Drury held off a Missouri Science and Technology surge and made just enough free throws and stops down the stretch to defeat the Miners 70-67 for their third straight Great Lakes Valley Conference West Division championship on Senior Night Thursday at the O'Reilly Family Event Center.
Kameron Bundy scored 18 points to lead four Panthers in double-figures as Drury moved to 18-8 overall and won the West with a 12-6 record to earn the No. 2 seed in next week's GLVC Championship post-season tournament. The Panthers will head to St. Charles, Mo., and the Family Arena for a date Thursday at 6 p.m. against an opponent to be determined by Sunday's first-round results at campus sites.
S&T finished 9-17 and 2-16, but looked nothing like a Miners team that is now 0-20 against the Panthers since the teams joined the GLVC in 2005-06.
Drury led the Miners 36-35 at the half, but pushed that advantage to 10 points (61-51) with 10:32 remaining after a jumper from
Drake Patterson.
The Miners wouldn't go away, and eventually grabbed a 67-66 lead on Marcus Walden's jumper with 2:14 to play. But the Panthers shut out S&T from there, got four free throws from Bundy over the next 36 seconds to take a 70-67 lead, and survived four missed free throws of their own and four missed 3-point tries by the Miners to seal the victory.
"When you're playing in close games, it comes down to 'are you tough enough to get something you can make,' and Bundy got in there and then made some free throws," Drury coach
Steve Hesser said. "We made some plays. Give S&T credit ... they battled, they played good. We made one more play than they did."
Mike Nwelue - who joined
Cameron Adams,
Ben Fisher and Patterson in pre-game festivities honoring the four seniors on Senior Night - added 13 points and Patterson and Fisher came up with 12 points each for the Panthers, who survived a 17-for-32 (53 percent) showing at the free-throw line. Bundy was 5-for-5 at the line, but the rest of the DU squad combined to go 12 for 27 at the stripe.
"We left 15 points on the board there," Hesser said. "That's a recipe for disaster, and it almost was disaster. They're called 'free throws,' so you've got to make them when you step up there."
Adams, who had missed the past two DU games with a back injury, grabbed a game-high eight rebounds as the Panthers were beaten 37-34 on the boards by the Miners.
Zach Ellis had 15 points and Curtis Okafor added 14 points and seven rebounds to lead S&T.
Drury will now await Sunday's first-round games in the GLVC Championship tournament to learn its opponent next Thursday in the GLVC tourney in St. Charles. If the seeds hold true, it would West runner-up Truman State, which defeated the Panthers 85-81 at The O' on January 29 in their only meeting this season.
"We were trying to send our seniors out with a special night," Hesser said. "We did that. And I'm proud of our seniors. They've had great careers here individually and collectively. We wanted them to have one more victory at home. We wanted to show our boosters and fans ... our guys were appreciative in the pre-game video, and that's how we feel about our (fans).
"Now we need to go win some (GLVC tourney) games and make up for some past boo-boos. We'll see what happens."
