ST. LOUIS – [BOX SCORE] Missouri Baptist ran into the buzz saw on Tuesday night against a hot-shooting William Woods team. The Owls shot 61 percent on the way to a 94-75 win over MBU in the Opening Round game of the 2014 American Midwest Conference Men's Basketball Tournament.
Missouri Baptist (7-24, 6-14 AMC) had a rough go of it from start to finish as the team struggled just to keep-up. The Owls jumped-out to an 8-0 lead and allowed the Spartans one brief run. MBU cut the lead to 11-8, but couldn't keep the Owls off the board.
William Woods followed the early Spartan run with one of its own. The Owls, led by Klayton Kuschel's five points, posted a 12-2 run and built their largest lead of the game with a 23-10 lead.
The Spartans shot the ball well on their own end as well. In the first half alone, MBU posted just over a 48 percent field goal percentage from the floor and cut the deficit to nine.
As the final 20 minutes of play commenced, the Spartans posted the first two points on a bucket by Chris Buzzell, but continued to lose ground after this point. The Owls ran-off nine unanswered points on the way to taking a 52-36 lead.
Jonathon Nutt was phenomenal in the game and led the Owls. Nutt posted 22 points and was 9-12 from the floor and 3-5 from three-point range. Seth Thomas finished with 15 points and was the second leading scorer for William Woods. Dontre' Jenkins, Blake Burgess and Matt Helle also finished in double-digits for WWU.
Chris Buzzell led the Spartans with 20 points and three steals on the night. The freshman was fantastic for Missouri Baptist and went 7-11 from the floor and 2-5 from three-point range.
Kalvin Lewis finished the night with 17 points and eight rebounds just shy of 36 minutes on the court. Lewis put together another great game in his final contest of his tremendous four-year career. Lewis finished the season with 486 points and his career with 1,274 points. He will finish his career as 10th on the All-Time list.
Tonight, the AMC Academic All-Conference Team was announced at every host site. Missouri Baptist had eight players recognized for their exemplary work in the classroom. Below are the names of the eight Spartans who were honored. In order to receive Academic All-Conference honors, each player must hold at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA:
MBU Academic All-Conference Recipients
Chris Buzzell
Amadou Cisse
Stanley Eboh
Ben Fiala
Kalvin Lewis
Logan Quinn
Chad Smith
Julio Velandia
