ST. CHARLES - In the record books someday, it will show that this was the third Great Lakes Valley Conference men's basketball championship won by the Drury Panthers in their now 10-year history in the league.
It won't show how this was the most unexpected of the three, by everyone except four Panther seniors who apparently refused to let their basketball careers be over.
No. 2 seed Drury knocked off top seed and nationally second-ranked Bellarmine 77-70 for the GLVC Championship Sunday afternoon at the Family Arena, earning its third straight trip to the NCAA Division II national tournament by virtue of the automatic bid that comes with the league title.
The Panthers (21-8), learned late Sunday they're headed for a rematch with top seed and host Bellarmine in the NCAA-II Midwest Regional next weekend.
And that they're making NCAA travel plans tonight and tomorrow could be considered an upset itself, when you factor in the way these Panthers were finishing the regular season. Their eight losses were as many as Drury had tallied in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons combined, which is nothing to frown at, considering Drury won an NCAA national championship the first year and went back to the Elite Eight last season.
But then there was the double-loss road trip at toughies Lewis - an embarrassing 76-52 blowout - and Wisconsin-Parkside in mid-February. Senior standout
Cameron Adams injured his back in the latter and would be lost for the next two games, and DU didn't respond well - falling at home to a so-so William Jewell team, and a week later, with a rusty Adams back in the lineup, struggling to nip Missouri S&T 70-67 at home on Senior Night.
The Panthers won the GLVC West for a third straight year, and that carried with it the No. 2 seed overall in the tourney, which surely didn't sit well with the big boys from the GLVC East. But DU quieted that talk once again.
Overtime wins over UMSL (70-65) on Thursday, then nationally eighth-ranked Parkside (68-67) again in overtime, to set up the matchup with a 26-2 Â Bellarmine team that had won 13 straight and had already played party-pooper with the Panthers in their past two meetings, ending DU's school-record, 34-game overall winning streak last season in Louisville (an 85-77 loss), and then snapping DU's record 32-game winning streak at The O' this season in a 62-58 triumph on January 10.
But, still facing a strong probability that their careers were over with a loss today, those DU seniors and junior guard
Kameron Bundy - named the tourney Most Valuable Player after scoring 27 points in Sunday's finale - weren't ready to be done. Again.
In what had to be one of the great GLVC title games in the league's long history - the lead changed hands 15 times, with five tie scores - Drury used the same formula it had in the previous two GLVC tourney games. Just try to stay close in the first half, make a run, and then see who can make the most big plays late.
Again, it was Drury.
Bellarmine led 35-29 at the half and was up by five (39-34) with 17:02 to go after a Jake Thelen layup. The league's regular season MVP finished with a game-high 28 points, including 16 in the first half.
But the Panthers went on a 10-2 run to grab the lead as
Ben Fisher went full-bore into his post-season hero act one more time, scoring 16 second-half points and making all four of his 3-point attempts, adding a rare bucket in the paint for a third straight game to boot.
The senior guard, who came into the GLVC Tourney averaging under three points per game, finished with a career-high 19 points on an uncanny 5-of-6 shooting from 3-point range. (Fisher has gone an incredible 18-for-26 from 3-point range, 69 percent, over his last five games ... and has averaged 13.8 points in that stretch).
Fisher had scored 58 points in Drury's first 24 games ... he has 69 points in the last five. And at the Family Arena, the Panthers and DU fans had reached the point where, when he let one fly, they expected it to go in from the former Nixa High standout who joined Bundy on the All-Tourney squad.
"It's all about confidence," Fisher said. "And my teammates have done a great job of finding me open to get the shots."
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Drake Patterson 3-pointer with 3:38 left put the Panthers on top 64-62, and then Fisher's short jumper made it a four-point lead 27 seconds later before
DaShaun Stark's bucket gave DU a six-point advantage with 2:16 to play.
From there, the Knights got no closer than three, the ultimate dagger coming on a deep, deep Bundy 3-pointer with 19 seconds left and the shot clock about to expire that put Drury up 73-67. Bundy added two more free throws and a steal and layup before the final horn for seven points in the final 19 seconds.
"I let it go, and it went in," Bundy said with a grin. "What a crazy ride."
And soon, the improbable celebration began.
"Congratulations to our guys," Drury coach
Steve Hesser said. "I don't think anybody would have been betting on us coming up here, playing the first two nights and winning in dramatic fashion in overtime, then beating an outstanding Bellarmine team. We couldn't get them slowed in the first half ... they just kept laying it off the glass at will.
"But it was kind of like the last two games ... just keep chopping wood. Hang in there and see what can happen at the end. I can't be prouder of them. This time of year, every team you play is good, and there's going to be bad things happen to you. How do you handle it and react? I thought our guys just hung in there, and I thought our seniors just wanted to continue to play."
Adams finished with 16 points and eight rebounds, and made some very tough shots against the taller Knights in a 5-for-7 shooting effort. Fisher was 7-for-8 overall from the field and added six rebounds and four steals in the best basketball game of his lifetime, as the Panthers - one day after shooting 39 percent against Parkside - blistered the nets at 61 percent (28 of 46), including 11 of 18 from 3-point range.
Bellarmine shot 57 percent (27 of 47), and got 16 points, nine assists and five steals from Chris Whitehead.Â
Drury finished with 21 turnovers, but had only eight after halftime. The Panthers outrebounded the Knights 24-17.
Drury also won GLVC Championships in 2008 at Weiser Gym with a Collins Harris-led squad, and in 2013 - the national championship year - with the backcourt of senior stars Alex Hall and Brandon Lockhart.
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