SPRINGFIELD, Mo. - The Quincy University men's basketball team traded Springfield's this week after making the trip to University of Illinois-Springfield last Saturday (Jan. 20), the Hawks hopped a state south to visit the Panthers of Drury University. An explosive shooting night for Quincy paved the way to a wire-to-wire 83-78 winner.
Red hot would be an understatement for how the Hawks kicked off the contest, burying four threes in four trips to open a 10 point lead just over two minutes into the game at 12-2.
QUs smallest lead of the first half came just 20 seconds into the contest when it led 3-0 on a three from Richardson, holding the Panthers at bay from there and building the advantage up to 47-35 at the half.
It was much of the same in the second half as Quincy remained with a comfortable advantage up until the final minute and change of the game that saw DU chop the lead all the way down to five as the game had already been all but decided at that point.
QU shot 59% from long range, nearly doubling its average performance in the category in big thanks to 6-7 and 4-6 efforts from deep for
Zion Richardson and
Isaiah Foster, respectively.The tandem put the Hawks on their back, combining for 49 points with 25 from Richardson and a new career-high 24 from Foster. Joining them in double figures was
Jake Hamilton with 10 in his second game with 10 or more points.
The Hawks showed why they are at the top of the list in the GLVC for rebounding this season, pulling down 45 boards for a +8 margin in that category. Richardson finished a board short of another double-double for the season, tying with
Todd Bieg for the team-lead of nine. Bieg nearly had a double-double himself, dropping nine and nine in points and rebounds during his first start of the season.
Quincy held DU to 42% shooting from the field as a team along with a dismal 23% from deep, doing well to shore up the perimeter on defense and forcing the Panthers into tough shots.
With the win, QU moves to 10-8 on the season and right back to .500 in the conference at 5-5.
Next up is a showdown with the Bearcats of Southwest Baptist University tomorrow (Jan. 27) in Bolivar, Mo. for a 3:00 pm GLVC contest.
