Yellowjackets Fall at St. Edward’s (2/10/06)
Box Score

AUSTIN, TX – The race for the Heartland Conference title can’t get any closer following a 105-95 win by St. Edward’s University over the Montana State-Billings men on Friday.  The win moved the Hilltoppers into a tie with the Yellowjackets atop the league standings at 7-1.  The Yellowjackets dropped to 15-4 overall while St. Edward’s improved to 17-5.

St. Edward’s entered the game as the fifth-ranked team in the NCAA South Central Region.  Both MSU Billings and St. Edward’s have four conference games remaining.  The top team in the final regular season standings will have home court advantage throughout the conference playoffs that will be held March 1 and 4.  According to conference bylaws, the first tiebreaker in the event of identical conference records is the head-to-head record of the tied teams.  The Yellowjackets and Hilltoppers will meet again Saturday night in Austin in a non-conference game, but if the teams finish in a tie for first, the non-conference game would decide the No. 1 seed at the conference tourney.

The Yellowjacket offense sputtered a little out of the gates and MSU Billings fell behind 21-12 seven minutes into the game.  Moritz Wohlers (Sr., Wolfenbuttel, Germany) kept the Yellowjacket in the game in the first half, scoring 19 of his team-high 29 points in the opening stanza.  Despite a slow offensive half, the Jackets trailed just 46-44 at the break.

MSU Billings scored the first six points of the second half to take a 50-46 lead.  Cameron Munoz (Sr., Chino, CA) hit on a 3-pointer and Wohlers converted a 3-point play in the paint.  The lead was short lived, however, as the Hilltoppers climbed back quickly.  After Wohlers gave the Jackets a 54-53 lead with 16:52 remaining, St. Edward’s answered with a Jeff Obersteller bucket in the paint to regain the lead for good.

The second half belonged to the Hilltoppers’ David Lunn, who poured in 27 of his game-high 41 points in the final 20 minutes.  The game was shaping up to be an entertaining scoring duel between Lunn and Wohlers, but two quick fouls called on Wohlers around the 12:00 mark of the second half sent the senior to the bench with five fouls.  Lunn owned the game from that point, although the Yellowjacket 3-point shooters did their best to make things interesting.

“Number 33 (Lunn) just played an outstanding game,” said Yellowjacket head coach Craig Carse.  “We just didn’t have anyone who could play at that level tonight.  I didn’t feel that we played to our potential tonight, but St. Edward’s played better than we did and got the win.  I thought Cameron did a good job of trying to shoot us back into the game, but we just didn’t have a rhythm.”

Munoz finished the night with 27 points, making four of his seven 3-pointers in the second half.  He was 7-of-16 from behind the arc, but as a team the Jackets were just 12-of-32.  Lunn finished the night 14-of-20 from the field and 9-of-10 from the free throw line.

The Jackets also got 17 points off the bench from Carlin Hughes (So., Perth, Australia).  Hughes didn’t start the game after missing much of the week’s practice with the flu.  He still played 37 minutes and made 4-of-8 from 3-point range.  Jonathan Wiley (Jr., Westlake Village, CA) scored nine points, making 7-of-8 from the free throw line.