When Maurice Acker told teammate Skip Mills that the Ball State University men's basketball team couldn't lose any more, the two decided they were the ones who would have to do something about it.
In the final stretch of Saturday's game against Bowling Green, Acker and Mills kept the ball in their hands and delivered basket after basket.
In the last 10 minutes of the game, the duo scored 21 of Ball State's 24 points while squeaking out a 62-61 win, the team's first conference victory of the season.
After seven games when the Cardinals didn't play a full 40 minutes of good basketball, Mills said the team had finally had enough.
"The whole team's getting tired of losing," Mills said. "We played the full forty [minutes]. In the second half they made a run at us and we were down but we decided we've just got to make the plays to win."
Ball State (5-9 overall, 1-5 MAC West) battled from behind for most of the game. It wasn't until the last seven minutes that Ball State went on a scoring rampage that made a seven-point Bowling Green lead evaporate into thin air.
A jumper by freshman Landon Adler from just inside the three-point line put Ball State up 50-49 with six minutes to play, and the Cards never relinquished the lead. Acker said he and his teammates found their offensive touch during the closing minutes.
"The offensive rhythm came from good ball movement," said Acker, who finished with 19 points and six assists. "In the first half we were moving the ball well but we were not getting enough passes in. In the second half we were getting a lot of ball movement and we weren't looking for the first fast shot."
After the Cards 10-0 run in the second half, the team would hit only one more field goal the rest of the way, but their 8-of-10 free-throw shooting carried them home.
Although it was Mills and Acker who led the team down the stretch, they had some help from the bench, too.
Freshman Anthony Newell provided the team's spark in the first half. After 13 straight possessions during which the Cardinals didn't score, Newell entered the game and scored the team's next eight points. Coach Tim Buckley said Newell and Adler, who played during the critical final stretches of the game, came of age Saturday night.
"Newell and Adler were building for this moment," Buckley said. "That's the consistency that we're looking for and now they got to keep it going."
Newell also stopped a potential Bowling Green game-tying possession with 25 seconds left to play. Newell stole on the ball in the left corner of the court and shuffled the ball to Acker, who was immediately fouled and sent to the charity stripe.
"Getting that turnover was a defining moment," Buckley said. "Those are the kind of plays that have to be made, and they weren't necessarily ones we were getting when we weren't having much success."
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