UE remains on the road at SIU on Thursday
A pair of University of Evansville men’s basketball players set their career scoring marks on Sunday with the Purple Aces losing an 85-80 contest against Drake inside the Knapp Center.
“We played as good of a first half as we have played over the recent stretch, I thought the passing and ball movement was better to start the game,†UE head coach Todd Lickliter said. “Sam (Cunliffe) did a great job today and was able to score in several different ways. He is someone that has a lot of dimensions to his game. We are going to just keep working and try to continue making progress.â€
Sam Cunliffe finished the game with 25 points on 9-of-16 shooting. He drained three triples and all four free throw tries while adding six rebounds before fouling out in the final minute. His previous scoring mark of 23 points came in 2016 against The Citadel when he played at Arizona State. Evan Kuhlman surpassed his scoring high with 17 points. Fifteen of those came from outside with five of his nine long range tries finding the bottom of the net. Jawaun Newton and K.J. Riley finished with 11 and 10 points, respectively.
Newton got Evansville (9-18, 0-14 MVC) on the board with a 4-point play. The triple was his ninth make in his last 13 attempts over the last seven contests. Evansville drilled three triples in a row with Sam Cunliffe and Evan Kuhlman adding two of their own to give UE a 10-2 lead. With the Aces continuing to lead by a 12-4 margin, the Bulldogs (17-10, 7-7 MVC) countered with a 7-0 run over the next three minutes to cut the deficit to one.
Artur Labinowicz knocked down his first outside shot of the day to push the lead to 17-11 eight minutes into the game before another spurt by the Bulldogs got them within a possession once again at 17-15. That is when Evan Kuhlman took over, connecting on consecutive triples to extend the lead to 26-18 with 8:11 on the clock.
Evansville’s lead reached nine points at 37-28 on a Shamar Givance layup inside of two minutes remaining but was trimmed down to six at the break when an Anthony Murphy basket cut UE’s edge to 40-34 at the half. Cunliffe led everyone with 13 points in the period with the Aces converting eight of their 16 3-point tries in the first 20 minutes.
Out of the break, Drake reeled off 13 points in a row over the first four minutes to go up by a 47-40 margin. The Bulldogs hit their first five attempts while the Aces missed their first five tries and turned it over twice. Cunliffe ended the stretch with a 3-point play. His bucket helped UE get back within a pair at the 13-minute mark when Labinowicz found Riley streaking to the basket to make it a 51-49 game. After missing their first five attempts of the second half, UE hit three out of four while Drake hit one of their next four attempts after making five in a row.
With 11:27 left in the game, Noah Frederking hit his first triple go make it a 54-52 deficit for UE. That is when Drake slowly started to pull away. Their advantage was pushed to double figures for the first time at 65-54 inside of seven minutes remaining. The Bulldogs hit four out of five attempts in the run while UE was mired in a 1-for-8 shooting drought.
When his team needed him most, Frederking delivered. Following a time out, the junior made it a 2-for-2 day from outside to end the drought. With just over five minutes remaining, Kuhlman connected on his fourth triple of the day to cut the gap to 67-62, but over the next 100 seconds, the Bulldogs responded. A 6-2 span made it a 9-point game.
The 15th point of the day for Kuhlman made it a 2-possession game before a pair of Riley free throws with 90 seconds remaining got the Aces within four. Riley struck again with two more from the line to make it a 3-point game (77-74) with 48 ticks remaining, but the Bulldogs hung on with late free throws clinching the win.
Leading DU was Anthony Murphy, who tallied 20 points and 13 boards. He was 10-of-13 from the free throw line. As a team, Drake hit 32 out of 42 from the charity stripe; the last time UE allowed the opponent to shoot 40 or more free throws was at North Carolina in December of 2011. For the game, DU shot 55.6% with the Aces finishing at 48.2%.
Thursday evening will see the Aces make the short trip to Carbondale, Ill. for a rematch against Southern Illinois. Game time is 7 p.m. inside the Banterra Center.
