MEN'S BASKETBALL: Foul trouble hurts Ball State in loss to Eastern Michigan

Scaife leads game with 21 points

After Ball State beat Northern Illinois on Wednesday, freshman guard Marcus Posley tweeted a message concerning the health of Jesse Berry.

“Ain’t the same without @JBerry_32. Hurry bk my dude… ”

It seemed Posley knew the junior guard’s looming importance with Eastern Michigan’s 2-3 zone next on the schedule.

And if the team didn’t know already, it certainly does now.

Berry’s 3-point touch and ability to penetrate off the dribble was sorely missed as Ball State (10-14, 4-8 MAC) failed to do either well in its 56-50 loss to Eastern Michigan (12-13, 5-6 MAC) on Saturday.

“They were without Berry tonight and he’s a huge part of what they do,” coach Rob Murphy said. “He’s one of their better, more experienced players. They’ve won two without him, so I’m not making excuses for them, but any time you have a guy with his experience, obviously it would help you in a situation like this.”

During the Cardinals’ two-game winning streak, senior Jauwan Scaife’s hot shooting—he scored 53 points—and Posley’s solid play in the starting lineup was good enough.

But in a game where the guard duo shot a combined 8-of-25 from the floor and 3-of-19 from 3-point range, Berry’s absence was transparent.

While coach Billy Taylor refused to accept his team’s health as an excuse, he did say the heavy minutes played by Scaife and others were starting to wear players down.

“This is the first game we looked tired,” Taylor said. “We’re basically playing seven guys and we looked fatigued. It’s been a long stretch of games. We’ll take a couple days off, try and get some rest, try and get healthy and try and get more guys back so we can hopefully make a hard push down the stretch here.”

For the first five minutes, Ball State looked like a team with fresh legs.

The Cardinals jumped out to a 9-1 lead, turning four Eagles’ turnovers into as many layups and dunks.

After pushing that lead to 14-5, however, Ball State went cold.

Murphy’s decision to start 6-foot, 5-inch Anthony Strickland at the top of his zone made his lineup extremely tall and the Eagles’ hands got active.

‘Even when they’re not necessarily clogging up the paint, their length is in the paint somewhere,” Scaife said. “Usually you have [Da’Shonte] Riley stepping up, or someone else rotating over, so it’s hard to get a shot off sometimes.”

The Cardinals’ inability to get good looks inside or out showed in their 37.5 (9-of-24) percent shooting in the first half. The Eagles shot 10-of-20, but the game was tied at 24 going into halftime.

Murphy said his team didn’t make any adjustments at the break — the Eagles just simply started playing better.

Whatever the difference was, Ball State’s didn’t have an answer and the poor shooting continued.

The Cardinals failed to score more than six free throws before Scaife finally hit a jumper at the 8:52 mark of the second half.

Eastern Michigan only had a 37-32 lead at that point, but that’s when redshirt junior Glenn Bryant took over the game.

A 6-foot, 8-inch hybrid forward with shooting touch, Bryant took Ball State’s frontcourt players out on the perimeter and out of their comfort zone.

“I thought we could take advantage of that [isolation] playing him at the four more—he’s been our starting 3-man all year,” Murphy said. “We knew it would have to be [Majok] Majok or [Matt] Kamieniecki or somebody on him that he should be able to take advantage of.”

Ball State’s best perimeter defender, Chris Bond, had picked up his third foul 41 seconds into the second half and that left the Cardinals’ big men out on an island.

Bryant went to work and hitan array of pull-up and fade-away jumpers down the stretch.

His team-high 20 points, 16 of those in the final 20 minutes, were the catalyst for Eastern Michigan’s 13-5 run over the next 5:04, giving the Eagles a 50-37 lead with 2:48 to play.

“It’s kind of frustrating not being out there to help my team and give energy for my guys,” Bond said. “But that’s not an excuse. We still had a chance to win the game.”

Ball State’s chance came in the form of Scaife, who scored nine of his game-high 21 points in the final 2-plus minutes of the game.

The Cardinals cut the lead to three points, 51-48, on a Scaife jumper, but a Ball State turnover and resulting dunk on the next possession sealed the game.

While Scaife scored more than 20 points for the third consecutive game, Taylor said the team’s reliance on long-range offense cost them the game.

“They had a lot of length on their perimeter, and as a result, we fell into the trap of not being able to penetrate the zone,” Taylor said. “We had more three’s than points in the paint, and that’s never a good formula against their 2-3 zone.”

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