By: Colton Steiner

BLUFFTON, Ohio - After a lengthy road trip, the Bluffton Beavers returned to their home court to kick off conference play against the Mount St. Joseph Lions. Both teams would go back and forth until the last five minutes of the second half where the visiting Lions would pull ahead and not let up as they cruised to an 83-68 win over the Beavers. With the loss, Bluffton falls to a record of 1-5 and start 0-1 in the HCAC while Mount St. Joseph improves to 3-4 overall and start conference play at 1-0. 

Despite the Lions starting off with a 4-2 lead, a JD Stokes (West Harrison, Ind. / Franklin County) two-handed throwdown would even up the contest and back-to-back lay-ins from Ian Snelling (Erlanger, Ky. / Dixie Heights) put the Beavers up 8-4 heading into the first media timeout. With Bluffton up front 10-8, an Ian Snelling triple and a Matt Ray (Indianapolis, Ind. / Herron) layup gave the home team a 15-8 lead with 13:45 left in the first half. The seven point lead wouldn't last long as the Lions would go on a 8-2 spurt to bring the game within one with 10:22 till the half. While Bluffton was able to go up 22-18 after an Ian Snelling layup, Mount St. Joseph would close out the half outscoring the Beavers 14-8 to hold a 32-30 lead over the home team at the break. 

Coming out of halftime, both teams would exchange buckets for seveal minutes with neither team holding more than a two-point lead until the 13:23 mark of the second half where the Lions held a 44-40 lead until a Matt Ray three brought the game within one. Trailing 52-47, Bluffton would go on a 9-3 run where they would wind up taking a one point lead after an Andre Irvin (Lewis Center, Ohio / Olentangy Orange) layup with 9:30 left to play. The lead would be short-lived as Mount St. Joseph would go up 64-59 untill a pair of Brendan Williams (South Bend, Ind. / Mishawaka) free throws brought the Beavers within three. Despite it being a one possession game with six minutes left to play, the Bluffton offense would struggle to knock down shots as they would be outscored 19-7 in the final minutes as the Beavers would fall to the Lions in a final score of 83-68. 

Andre Irvin and Nevin Robson (Kenton, Ohio / Hardin Northern) would each tally 14 with Robson snagging six rebounds, while Irvin dished out five assists. Adding 11 points and a team-high seven boards was Ian Snelling, with Matt Ray scoring eight off the bench. 

Mount St. Joseph couldn't seem to miss, hitting 58 percent (29-of-50) of their shots from the field and connecting on 6-of-13 (46.2 percent) from behind the arc. The Beavers struggled to connect on offense, going 26-of-64 (40.6 percent) for the game, including a 5-of-22 (22.7 percent) from deep. The Lions dominated the glass, outrebounding Bluffton 38-27, but the stingy Beaver defense was able to force 15 Mount St. Joseph turnovers that led to 18 points. 

Looking ahead, Bluffton will hit the road once again on Saturday, Dec. 6 when they travel to Rose-Hulman to face off against the Fightin' Engineers with tipoff set for 4 p.m.

-Beavers