The 10th-ranked University of Southern Indiana men’s basketball team begins a week that could determine control of the Great Lakes Valley Conference East Division with an NCAA Division II top-10 showdown versus ninth-ranked Bellarmine University Monday at 7:30 p.m. Live coverage of one of the GLVC’s longest running rivalries, including live statistics, video, and audio, can be found on GoUSIEagles.com.
The Screaming Eagles (16-0, 6-0 GLVC) are coming off a thrilling two-game road swing that featured a 111-89 victory at Truman State University and a last-minute 88-85 win over 24th-ranked Quincy University. The victories extended USI’s season-opening winning streak to 16 games, tying for second-best in the history of the program.
Senior guard Jeril Taylor (Louisville, Kentucky), who scored a school-record 50 points in the win over Truman, leads the Eagles with 21.0 points per game, 22.5 points per conference outing. Sophomore guard Alex Stein (Evansville, Indiana) is second with 17.7 point per contest, while junior forward Julius Rajala (Finland) and senior guard Bobo Drummond (Peoria, Illinois) round out the double-digit scorers with 12.6 and 10.8 points per outing, respectively.
Bellarmine(13-3, 5-1 GLVC) is coming off of a 1-1 conference weekend, defeating Quincy in overtime, 103-96, and losing to Truman, 77-72. The Knights are 3-2 in their last five games since coming back from the holiday break.
USI leads the all-time series with Bellarmine, 50-38, with the teams splitting the last eight games. The Knights, however, won the last year’s series, taking two of three from the Eagles. Taylor led the Eagles against the Knights in last year with 19.0 points per game, followed by Drummond and Stein with 13.0 points per contest each.
The USI-Bellarmine top-10 showdown begins a big week for the GLVC East Division. The top four teams in the GLVC East — USI, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside (14-1, 6-0 GLVC), Lewis University (11-5, 6-0 GLVC), and Bellarmine — face each other in six games that could that could determine control of the division with just over a month left in the regular season.
The Eagles finish this week by hosting UW-Parkside Thursday at 7:30 p.m. for its annual United Way “White Out Game” and Lewis Saturday at 3:15 p.m.
