LIBERTY – Drury dug itself a hole early in the second half and never could fully recover in falling to William Jewell 87-84 in Great Lakes Valley Conference play Saturday afternoon at the Mabee Center.
Kameron Bundy had a career-high 30 points, but Drury (11-6, 6-3) simply couldn't get enough stops at the defensive end to fully come back against a Jewell (7-10, 2-7) that was hot from 3-point range down the stretch.
"Give Jewell credit … they played together, they played hard, and they made more points than we did," Drury coach Steve Hesser said.
"Hey, the best team won today. Give William Jewell credit. But I probably need to do some soul-searching and try to find a way to get our guys to play, because our basketball team for three weeks in a row has been a completely different team from Thursday to Saturday.
"The difference is the consistency, and we just don't have the consistency from day to day. It's January … you can't say you're inexperienced now, because they know how to play and know what to do. You've got to have stronger will than your opponent, and the team that had the stronger will today was the victor."
Drury trailed 37-32 at the half, and saw the Cardinals push that lead as high as 14 (52-38) with 14:09 to play before mounting a charge. The Panthers had it down to two (53-51) less than three minutes later after a Lucciano Gamiz 3-pointer with 11:23 to go, but Jewell answered with five straight points to push the lead back out to seven.
It was back and forth from there, until the Cardinals stretched it back out to 11 (74-63) with 5:37 to play – fueled by a 10-2 run, and held off the Panthers down the stretch. Bundy's 3-pointer with 1:14 to play made it a two-point game (83-81), but Jewell went 4-for-4 at the free-throw line from there to close it out.
Darius Tomlin finished with 27 points to lead William Jewell, which also got 19 points from Patrick Whelan, 14 points from Jordan Tanner and 11 points from Larry Fitzgerald.
Tevin Foster finished with 21 points, Gamiz had 11 points and Josh Palmer scored 10 points for the Panthers, who lost for just the second time in their last eight games and had a three-game winning streak snapped.
Jewell finished with a 31-28 rebounding edge, with six each from Palmer and Jamal Cummings leading the Panthers' efforts. Both teams shot 52 percent from the field, with the Panthers going 12-for-21 (57 percent) from 3-point range to keep it close.
Bundy was 8-for-11 on treys, falling one 3-pointer shy of Alex Hall's single-game record of nine for DU set at Missouri S&T in 2012.
