ST. LOUIS, Mo. - The Drake University mens' basketball team nearly rallied from a 10-point deficit before falling to Missouri State, 69-67, in a first-round game at the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament.
Drake (7-24) tied the contest at 64-64 with 2:17 left on a Casey Schlatter (Iowa Falls, Iowa) jumper. Seconds later, Schlatter got a critical defensive rebound on a Missouri State (13-18) miss and pushed the ball up the court with Reed Timmer (New Berlin, Wis.) finishing the play to put the Bulldogs up, 66-64, with 1:48 left.
MSU's Ryan Kreklow answered with a three-pointer, his third of the game, to reclaim the lead and a pair of free throws later put the Bears up by three points. With seven seconds left and a three-point lead, the Bears elected to foul and the Bulldogs made one-of-two shots to trim the margin while MSU missed a pair of free throws on the ensuing possession.
Timmer hauled in the rebound on the second miss with four seconds left and drove the ball up court before launching a last-second three-point attempt as time expired. The dramatic shot was on line, but rattled out to end the Bulldogs' season.
Schlatter had his finest game in a Drake uniform to date with seven points, seven rebounds and a staggering career-high 11 assists, the most by a Bulldog in an MVC Tournament game since 2008. Timmer added 12 points with seven rebounds while Dominik Olejniczak (Torun, Poland) added 18 points on 9-of-13 shooting and eight rebounds.
"We came out, and we talked about we were going to get it down to five after the first media timeout," Schlatter said of the second half offense he helped create. "We just came out, pounded the ball into Dom [Olejniczak], hit a couple of wide open inside-out threes, and like I said, just making a simple play and getting the best shot available."
MSU was paced by 21 points from Chris Kendrix while Dequon Miller had 14 points, seven rebounds and four assists.
Drake opened the second half on a 13-2 run to erase that 10-point deficit and take the lead behind six points from Olejniczak and three assists from Schlatter.
"We dug ourselves a hole and got down ten at halftime, and we talked about how we were going to get back into it in the second half and it was going to be three or four points each time out, each four-minute segment time-out," said Drake head coach Ray Giacoletti. "And we made a really good run to get seven points made up right away."
Neither team would lead by more than three points for the next four minutes until MSU went on a 13-2 run to take a nine-point, 62-53, lead with 7:20 left. Seconds later, Drake engineered an 8-0 run to pull within a point, 62-61, with less than four minutes to play to set up the thrilling final minutes.
Drake shot 60.9 percent from the field in the second half to trim MSU's halftime lead began courtesy of three early three-pointers from Kendrix. Kendrix would score 11 of the Bears' first 13 points of the game as the Bears took an early 15-10 lead and extended that to 25-19 before Timmer scored the Bulldogs' next seven points to pull within one point, 27-26, with 4:32 left in the opening half.
However, the Bears answered with seven-straight points of their own, capped by another Kendrix three-pointer to stretch the lead back out to eight points, 34-26. The Bears closed the half on a 13-4 run to carry a 10-point, 40-30, advantage into halftime behind 17 first-half points from Kendrix.
Of Drake's 67 points in the loss, 65 came from the team's freshmen and sophomore class that has seen continued development, especially in the last month of the season.
"I couldn't be more proud of this team," Giacoletti said. "It took us a while to figure out how to play the right way, but we have a good foundation. We have young guys that are going to get better from this experience. Little things of 18 assists tonight, that's steps in the right direction for us. Obviously, we didn't get the win. It's a credit to Missouri State. But we did some things that will help our program out as we move forward."
