It was a monumental day inside of Siebens Fieldhouse on Saturday afternoon as the Buena Vista men's basketball team scored a school record 142 points and head coach Brian Van Haaften notched his 400th career victory as the Beavers topped visiting Greenville University, 142-128.
Senior David Jeffries turned in a season-high 31 points on 12-of-16 shooting to go along with his eight rebounds, four assists and three steals. Fellow senior Thomas Wisecup was three assists shy of a triple-double, scoring 16 points, grabbing a career-best 11 rebounds and dishing out seven assists over 20 minutes. Senior Adam Juhl was 7-of-8 from the free-throw line and dropped in a career-high 16 points while Canyon Hopkins chimed in with a career-best 13 points and Matthew Goodman matched his with 11 points to go along with five boards. Billy Sparks made four of the team's three-point buckets and scored a career-high 19 points, to go along with five assists and a pair of steals.
The Panthers came into the contest ranked third in Division III this season in scoring at 120.0ppg and were third in three-point makes per contest (18.3).
The Beavers, however, came out firing and led throughout. It was a 50-40 contest with just over 6:00 left 1st half before BVU went on a 32-18 spurt to build an 82-58 halftime cushion. The team shot nearly 80 percent from the field in the first half.
Greenville did its best to claw back in the second half after going down by as many as 32 at 97-65 just five minutes into the half. The Panthers, which made 19 three-point buckets and forced 31 turnovers in the contest, got as close as 15 with just over 3:00 still left to play but back-to-back layups from Jeffries and Wisecup push the advantage back to 18. The Beavers went back up by 20 with just over 2:00 left, and went on to the 14-point victory.
Johari Dix turned in a game-high 42 points to help lead Greenville (2-3).
BVU was 50-of-73 from the field in the contest (68.5 percent) and made 9-of-13 from downtown. The team came in shooting better than 81 percent from the free-throw line and made 33-of-43 attempts.
Van Haaften runs his stellar overall career record to 400-180 and wins for the 210th time inside of Siebens Fieldhouse.
Buena Vista improves to 3-1 on the year and now gears up to open Iowa Conference play on Wednesday night, November 29, at Simpson College in an 8:00 p.m. tip-off.