SPRINGFIELD, Mo.— The Truman State Bulldogs used a solid second-half shooting effort from the free throw to rally past the Drury Panthers and claimed a 79-63 win at the O'Reilly Family Event Center on Saturday afternoon.
The Bulldogs broke away from 57-57 tie with just over five minutes to play, including hitting a perfect 16 of 16 from the charity stripe in the second half, and that proved to be a big part of the swing, as the Panthers had held a 34-27 at halftime on the strength of an early 12-0 scoring run.
The Panthers and Bulldogs traded the lead five times over the final 12 minutes of play, but it was a 20-6 run by the visitors to close the contest that sealed the win.
"I don't know what the reason was, but we reverted back to some bad habits," said Drury head coach
Chris Foster. "When things got hard, they went on a little run and we didn't move the ball well, which caused us to turn it over. We're a team that needs shots to go down to feel good and that is kind of what fuels us."
Freshman
Logan Applegate paced the Panthers scoring with 19 points, 14 coming in the second half. Juniors
Riley Naeger and
Brady O'Connell had 10 points each as Drury drops to 7-12 overall and 3-8 in Great Lakes Valley Conference play.
Elijah Hazekamp, with a game-high 27 points, topped the scoring for the Bulldogs, who are now 9-10 and 4-7 in GLVC action.
The Panthers return to action on Thursday, January 26
th, when they play at Southwest Baptist University at 7:30 pm.
#allweDUiswin
