Posted by
Don Haynes
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Fri, Mar 20, 2009
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Men's Basketball - DI
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Reggie Bunch led five players in double figures and a stifling defense shut down Tougaloo College's perimeter attack as the No. 8-ranked Robert Morris College men's basketball team moved into the quarterfinals of the 2009 Buffalo Funds-NAIA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament with an 89-69 victory over the Bulldogs in a Round of 16 game at historic Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, MO on Friday morning.
Bunch, an all-Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference selection, scored 16 of his game-high 27 points in the first half as the Eagles built a 43-38 halftime advantage. The junior from Racine, WI missed only two shots from the field and was just as hot from the free throw line, hitting seven of his eight attempts. A team-high eleven rebounds gave him his eleventh double-double of the season.
The Eagles' defense keyed a second-half run that turned a close contest into a near runaway. RMC held the Bulldogs scoreless from the field for over five minutes. With Bunch dominating the defensive boards, TC was one-and-done for much of the second period. The Bulldogs had hit ten treys in their first-round upset win over Fresno Pacific (CA), but led by big efforts from Billy Rush (Dolton, IL), Andre White (Zion, IL) and Jason Bowden (Chicago, IL) on the perimeter, the Eagles shut down the Bulldogs' three-point shooters. Tougaloo could manage only four for the game, with none of them coming in the second half.
"We kept the pressure up and just wore them down," said RMC head coach Al Breuhl, whose team will play in the Elite Eight for the fifth straight season and the seventh time in his coaching career. "We got our legs under us early and didn't have the bad stretch of turnovers in the first half that got us into trouble on Wednesday [a come-from-behind overtime victory against Montana State-Northern]."
The Eagles had but fifteen turnovers in the game. Against MSN, they had twenty in the first half.
Another big area of improvement for RMC came at the free throw line. After making just 19-of-39 attempts in their first-round game, the Eagles bounced back with a 21-for-26 performance from the charity stripe on Friday.
"We had the right guys shooting them this morning," said Bruehl.
Besides Bunch's big scoring game, four other Eagles reached double figures. White once again played big in a big game, scoring 13 points on a trio of three-pointers. Rush and Page (Indianapolis, IN) each tallied 11 points and grabbed seven rebounds with Page also dishing out four assists. Marcus Hall (Buffalo, NY) had six assists as well. Bowden added ten points off the bench.
Led by Bunch, the Eagles dominated the boards, out-rebounding the Bulldogs 46-34.
RMC has now won twenty consecutive games, the NAIA's longest active winning streak. The Eagles will face unseeded Auburn University-Montgomery (AL) in the quarterfinal round. AUM defeated William Jewell College (MO), which upset No. 1-seeded Rogers State (OK) in the first round, 83-67. The Elite Eight matchup will tip-off at 1:00 PM CST on Saturday.
