Beaver Men Tally Fourth Straight Win

The Buena Vista men’s basketball team saw four of its five starters score in double figures, while it shot 58 percent from the field overall in the contest, en route to a big 83-77 road victory at Wartburg College (8-11, 2-8 IIAC) on Wednesday night, running the team’s current win streak to a season-high four straight.

Junior Wes Nordquist (Adel, Iowa/ADM), who picked up two quick fouls in the game, led all scorers with 20 points, on 8-of-13 shooting, while also grabbing six rebounds.  Seniors Doug Bissen (Earling, Iowa/Harlan) and Jeff Janssen (Fairmont, Minn./Fairmont) combined to shoot 14-of-21 from the field to finish with 17 points each.  Bissen also grabbed a team-best nine rebounds.  Sophomore Michael Kaufmann (Harlan, Iowa/Harlan) turned in 11 points, grabbed four rebounds and dished out a pair of assists, while senior Michael Elming (Johnston, Iowa/Johnston) chimed in with seven points and a team-leading five assists.

Defensively, BVU out-rebounded the Knights, 38-25, including 10 offensive boards.

Wartburg led 16-11 seven minutes into the game before three straight buckets from Bissen gave the Beavers the lead back at 17-16.  Wartburg later led by four with four minutes left in the first half, but the Beavers, who shot 50 percent in the half rallied back and took a 34-31 lead.  The Knights then got a long range basket with 30 seconds on the clock and the two teams went to the locker room tied at 34-34.

BVU came out of the gate quickly to start the second half, scoring the first six points of the period to take a 40-34 lead two minutes in and forcing the Knights to call a timeout.  A three-pointer by Janssen just over a minute later gave the Beavers a 45-37 margin.

Wartburg would cut its deficit down to four, but Janssen responded with another three-pointer and a free-throw, while Kaufmann buried a triple of his own to give the team the game’s first double-digit lead (54-44) with 14 minutes to play.

After the Knights chipped the lead down to three nearing the eight-minute mark, BVU used a key 7-0 run over the next three minutes to push the advantage back to 10. It led by as many as 11 following Elming’s lone three-pointer of the game, and Wartburg wouldn’t get any closer than seven until its final basket with 20 seconds left for the game’s final score.

Jordan Sathoff turned in 15 points to lead three Knights in double-digits.

The win is BVU’s fourth straight overall and runs the program’s current streak of 10-win seasons to 16.  The Beavers are now 10-8 overall (6-3 IIAC) and will host Central College (12-6, 5-5 IIAC) on Saturday night at 8:00pm.

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