BOLIVAR, Mo. – The Drury Panthers fell short at Southwest Baptist 70-61 on Monday night in Bolivar. It was Drury’s second game in three days and their second contest since a 14-day shutdown of the squad due to COVID-19 issues on their roster.
Drury played Monday’s game with 10 active players, two more than in Saturday’s 82-76 win over Missouri S&T, but the Panthers could not overcome an early deficit in their nine-point loss.
Southwest Baptist raced to an 18-4 lead in the first eight minutes, but Drury chipped away and trailed by eight, 38-30, at halftime. The Bearcats regained a double-digit lead in the second half, but the Panthers pulled within five midway through the half. Drury had several chances to get within a possession of the lead, but SBU held them off and closed out the game to win by nine.
“We had a lot of self-inflicted mistakes,” said Drury head coach Chris Foster. “Give Southwest Baptist credit – they have a good team, they’re well-coached, and they play really hard. We just didn’t make the right play consistently. We didn’t get the ball out of our hands fast enough to move it quick enough, or we didn’t make the right cut all the time. We had a stretch in the second half where we had five or six stops in a row, but we turned it over on three or four of those possessions.”
Obi Okafor led the Panthers with 15 points, and the senior forward from Las Vegas added nine rebounds. Victor Nwagbarachoa also had 10 points.
RJ Crawford paced the Bearcats with 18 points, while Quinn Nelson put in 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting from the field.
Southwest Baptist, the division leader in the Great Lakes Valley Conference’s West Division, improved to 14-4 and 8-3 in the league, while Drury dropped to 5-10 and 2-5 in the GLVC.
The Panthers play again on Thursday when they travel to Missouri-St. Louis for a 7:30 pm in St. Louis.
#MoreThanChampions
