The Drake University men's basketball team begins the second half of the Missouri Valley Conference season Saturday, Jan. 27, at Evansville to complete the season series with the Purple Aces. Tipoff is scheduled for 1 p.m. on The Valley on ESPN3.
The Bulldogs hit the road with a 6-3 record in league play to sit alone in second place in the league standings after suffering their first home loss of the season Wednesday evening against league leader Loyola. Earlier this season, the Bulldogs blitzed Evansville, 81-65 in Des Moines behind a career-high 23 points from junior Nick McGlynn (Stoughton, Wis.). Evansville enters the contest at 3-6 in the MVC standings.
Saturday's game features the MVC's top two scorers in Evansville's Ryan Taylor (19.8 ppg) and Drake's Reed Timmer (18.1 ppg). Over the course of his career, Timmer has scored 115 points against the Purple Aces to help him in his quest to become Drake's all-time scoring leader. The senior currently has 1,747 career points, the 15th most by an active NCAA player and needs just 43 more points to become the Bulldogs' all-time scoring leader.
Timmer has been the Bulldogs' top three-point threat this season, converting on 44 percent of his three-point attempts this season with 59 makes. However, the Bulldogs' three-point fortunes have changed as of late. Last week, Drake and Evansville were two of the top three-point shooting teams in the nation, but the Bulldogs are 7-of-46 from the arc in the last two games. Drake hopes to right that trend against Evansville, a team against which Drake's current roster has shot 34-of-82 against in its previous meetings.
Drake remains the top scoring team in the MVC at 74.8 points per game. On the other side of the court, Drake has held four of its nine MVC opponents to less than 40 percent shooting, winning all four of those contests. In the first meeting between the squads, Evansville shot 42.3 percent from the field, but was held to 4-of-15 shooting from the three-point arc.
Following Saturday's game, the Bulldogs return home to host SIU Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. in the Knapp Center.
