As Ball State beat Southeast Missouri 87-83 Monday, seniors Chris Bond and Jesse Berry achieved new personal bests as they led their team to a 2-1 record on the year.
Bond, who was last year’s Mid-American Conference leader in steals, scored a career-high 20 points, grabbed three rebounds and handed out an assist and as he carried his team to victory.
“I was just playing throughout our offense, trying to stay in attack mode and crashing the offensive boards,” Bond said about his performance.
Bond picked up his offense at the 3:51 mark of the second half with a put-back dunk off a missed three-point attempt from Berry, which had the entire crowd of 2,765 on their feet.
The Gary, Ind., native then scored the next seven points for the Cardinals, capping it off with a fast break alley-oop dunk from freshman Zavier Turner, which led to a Southeast Missouri timeout.
“It’s been in the back pocket,” Turner said about creating the play. “I saw him in the first half, but I kind of missed him — I was a little iffy on the pass from half court.”
Turner said he has talked about throwing lobs to Bond all season.
Bond was relatively quiet going into Monday’s game, part of the reason being the strong play of Turner. In the season opener, Bond scored just seven points against an Indiana State team, only to add eight points in the blowout win against Taylor.
In the first half of Monday’s game, Bond had a quiet eight points before heading to the locker room. That changed in the second half after a series of tough contested layups for the 6-foot-4 forward. Bond finished 6-of-11 from the field with 8-of-10 from the foul line.
Berry moved up in the record books as he passed up Peyton Stovall for No. 3 in Ball State school history of three-pointers made with 165. Berry finished with 19 points on 5-14 shooting and 3-11 from distance.
Berry tied his fellow Lafayette Jefferson High School alumnus at the 6:45 mark of the second half with a three to put his team up by two. Berry would then pass Stovall at the 3:14 mark off an assist from Turner.
“It’s feels good, just hard work, getting my shots up and doing what I do every day.” Berry said. “It’s an honor to be in that category.”
Berry and Bond combined to score 39 points to go along with fellow senior Majok Majok’s 11. Tyler Koch was the only senior to not score Monday night.
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