ROLLA, Mo. – MissourI S&T's men's basketball team will get its Great Lakes Valley Conference schedule underway Thursday night and will jump head first into it, as the opponent is the defending national champions.

The Miners will face last year's NCAA Division II titlist Drury, currently ranked third nationally in the latest poll released on Tuesday. S&T heads into the 7:45 p.m. matchup with the 5-0 Panthers coming off a split of its two weekend games at the Kentucky Wesleyan Holiday Classic, where it knocked off Young Harris in overtime before falling to the hosts in the championship game.

The Miners boast the GLVC's highest scoring offense as conference play gets underway as they are averaging 98.7 points per game and have cleared the 100-point mark in four of their six contests. Senior guard Bryce Foster (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central) is the league's second-leading scorer with an average of 23.5 points per game.

Foster, one of four Miners averaging in double figures heading into Thursday's contest, was selected to the all-tournament team at KWC along with Danylo Zuikov (Kiev, Ukraine/LaLumiere School), who hit six three-pointers in Saturday's game and has a team-high 18 on the season. He is also in double figures with his average of 12 points a game along with Nusrath Khan (Morton Grove, Ill./Maine East) (17 per game) and Mudiaga Eruteya (Chicago, Ill./Notre Dame) (15.2 per contest).

As a team, the Miners are also second in the conference with 10 three-pointers per game, while Zuikov leads the GLVC on an individual basis with his 3.6 treys per outing. S&T also leads the GLVC in steals per game and have forced its opponents into a league-high 125 turnovers.

The Panthers moved up one spot in the national poll after keeping their perfect record intact through a pair of close games over the holiday weekend. Drury overcame a 15-point second half deficit to pull out a two-point win over Northwest Missouri State, then needed overtime the following day to dispatch Cameron 70-66.

Kameron Bundy, a sophomore guard, has scored at least 22 points in three of the four games in which he has played this season and is averaging 20.5 points a contest which ranks sixth in the GLVC. Bundy is also third in the league in steals behind the Miners' Khan and Eruteya with 2.3 per game.

The Panthers are one of the top shooting teams again in NCAA Division II, connecting on 52.5 percent of their shots from the floor and 41.8 percent from three-point range. Cameron Adams, who is scoring 14.8 points per contest, is shooting 69 percent from the field on the year.

Drury enters Thursday's game as the owners of the longest winning streak in Division II of 28 games; the Panthers' last loss came at Indianapolis on Jan. 10. The 3-3 Miners, meanwhile, have not lost back-to-back games thus far in the 2013-14 season.

Game Notes: Miners vs. #3 Drury

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