ST. LOUIS, Mo. – Try as they might, the Missouri Baptist Spartans could never quite get over the top with the Williams Baptist University Eagles on Saturday afternoon. WBU avenged an earlier season loss by beating the Spartans on their home floor by a score of 78-70.
 
Both teams were subject to cold shooting early, as the score was 4-4 three minutes into the game. When Eagles guard Duke Hardin scored a fastbreak layup with 16:38 to play in the first half making the score 6-4 WBU, it broke the final tie of the game. The Eagles held a lead from that point forward. A dunk by forward Mujtaba Alkhaldi with 10:32 left in the first half trimmed the lead to one point at 16-15, but that is the closest the Spartans would get to even the rest of the way. The Eagles would extend the lead to as many as 13 before settling for an 8-point half-time lead at 36-28.
 
When Tyrell Andrews opened the second-half scoring with a jumper 20 seconds in, the lead was cut to six. The Eagles Ben Keton answered with his first of six second-half three pointers and the lead would only go below nine once until the final minute of the game.  The Spartans had plenty of chances to get closer in the second half but could never get within three possessions of the Eagles for the entire second half. MBU held the Eagles to just two points over a three-and-a-half-minute stretch beginning at the 7:22 mark of the game but could trim only two points off of a 10 point deficit. The shots just weren't going down.
 
For the game the Spartans shot 50% from the field, to just 41% for WBU, but because of 15 MBU turnovers the Eagles took 10 more shots that the Spartans. When they were able to score the Spartans had 20 assists on 28 made field goals.
 
Individually, Alkhaldi continued his strong play of late, joining Bryce Johnson in leading MBU with 14 points. Other players in double-figures were Brendon Hardy with 12 points and Jadis White with 10.
 
The second half was the Ben Keton show.  The sophomore from Batesville, Ark. caught fire in the final half by scoring 22 of his game-high 25 points after the break. Many of those points came from behind the arc as he sank six of eight attempts in the second half, and in so doing sank any chances of MBU coming back to win the game.
 
The loss drops the Spartans to 12-12 on the season and momentarily keeps them in second place in the conference. They are now tied with Central Baptist College and WBU with four losses in AMC play, but they lead both of them with one more victory. With the loss by the Spartans and the results elsewhere around the league, Columbia College is now two games ahead of the field for the top spot in the American Midwest Conference standings, with only five games remaining on their schedule.
 
As fate would have it, the Cougars are next up on the schedule for MBU.  The Spartans will visit Columbia next Saturday with tip-off happening at 3:00 p.m.