ROLLA, Mo. – Two teams that opened their conference season with back-to-back wins face off Saturday afternoon at Billy Key Court, as Missouri S&T plays host to Drury in a 3 p.m. Great Lakes Valley Conference contest.
Both the Miners, 4-5 on the season and Panthers, who are 5-2, swept their opening weekend contests in GLVC play with wins over Maryville and Missouri-St. Louis. S&T, which won its third straight game Tuesday with a 104-91 win over Blackburn, posted a 10-point win over Maryville before rallying from a 17-point deficit to win at UMSL Saturday.
Drury won at UMSL after trailing by 13, then held off Maryville Saturday on the road 82-78 to join S&T and Quincy atop the GLVC West Division II standings heading into play this weekend.
The Miners had six players in double figures Tuesday in the win over Blackburn, led by
Quinn Poythress (Jackson, Mo./Notre Dame Regional)' career-high 21 points and 20 from
Zach Ellis (St. Louis, Mo./Whitfield School). Poythress went eight-of-13 from the field in the game which included a pair of three-point baskets; he has made 10-of-15 from long range thus far on the year.
Ellis' 20 points also included a 10-of-10 performance at the free throw line, where the Miners made 38-of-39 in the game which included their final 33 attempts. Ellis also recorded five assists and four steals, as did
Juwan Miller (Kitchener, Ont./Huron Heights) in a game where he scored a season-high 19 points.
B.J. McLaughlin (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central), who did not play Tuesday due to an illness, leads the Miners with an average of 14.6 points per game while Ellis is the other Miner in double figures at 12.1 points a contest.
Rokas Paulauskas (Talsiai, Lithuania/Hamilton Heights Acad.) leads the Miners in rebounding with 8.7 a game while Miller has team highs in assists with 31 and steals with 15.
Drury comes into Saturday's matchup with two players averaging in double figures as well – both with marks higher than McLaughlin's -- in Kameron Bundy and Tevin Foster. Bundy, last week's GLVC "Player of the Week", is pouring in 20.3 points a game, the third-best mark in the conference and had 26 points in the win at Maryville while Foster added 20.
Foster is eighth in the league in scoring at 16.7 points per game and between him, Bundy and Lucciano Gamiz, have made 44 of the Panthers' 48 three-point baskets this season. Drury is shooting 43.2 percent from long range, the second-best mark in the conference and 11
th-best in NCAA Division II, while all three of the aforementioned players are shooting 42.9 percent or better from beyond the arc.
Gamiz is averaging 9.9 points per game and scored 16 in the comeback win at UMSL, while dishing out 22 assists as well.
The Panthers also own the GLVC's third-best free throw percentage at 76.2 percent (S&T is fifth at 75.6 percent) and are holding teams to just 32.8 percent shooting from three-point land.
