SAINT PETER, Minn. – A late comeback effort Wednesday night came up short for the Gustavus men’s basketball team as it lost 71-63 to Saint Mary’s. The loss drops the Gusties to 8-16 overall and 8-11 in the MIAC, while the Cardinals secured a playoff berth, improving to 13-11 overall and 10-9 in the league. Gustavus needs a win at Augsburg on Saturday paired with a St. Olaf loss against Macalester to land the No. 6 seed in the MIAC playoffs.
“Regardless of what Saturday means in regard to playoffs, we would like to finish the season with a successful game,” Head Coach Mark Hanson said. “We battled tonight. We missed some shots that I thought were good shots. I thought we defended them well for a good portion of the time, but they just kept making shots. And we got ourselves in hole, turned it over too many times. There was certainly some resiliency in coming back, but you can’t let yourself get in that sort of hole.”
Trailing by 17 with 9:35 left in the game, Kaleb Feahn’s (Jr., Waseca) three started a 10-0 run for the Gusties to force a Cardinal timeout with 5:49 on the clock. Saint Mary’s regained a double-digit lead at 64-53 with 3:32 left in the game, but the Gusties answered with eight unanswered points, capped by a spot-up three by Benji Lundberg (So., Ellendale) to make the score 64-61 with 1:03 remaining. But on the ensuing possession, the Cardinals were able to sink a jumper and finished out the game at the free throw line to secure an eight-point victory.
Critical turnovers plagued the Gusties in the first half as they gave the ball away eight times in the first 20 minutes and trailed 34-30 at the break. Gustavus finished the game 43.1 percent shooting from the floor and was 8-for-26 from beyond the arc.
Peter Lundquist (Jr., Rochester) led the offense with 17 points off the bench. He shot 7-of-11 from the floor and had five rebounds. Marten Morem (So., Caledonia) scored 12 points on 5-of-6 shooting and Feahn finished with 10 points.
Gustavus wraps up the regular season 1 p.m. Saturday at Augsburg.
“We’ll go up to Augsburg and try to be the best team we can, and we’ve shown that we are good enough to beat them,” Hanson said.