SILOAM SPRINGS -- Kimmy Deines gets extra fired up each time John Brown University plays a team from around her hometown.
Deines scored a team-high 18 points to help the Golden Eagles edge Evangel 79-71 in overtime in the first round of the JBU Basketball Classic at Bill George Arena on Friday.
The senior from Springfield (Mo.) Glendale was 7 of 8 from the field to finished just two points shy of her career high against the school from Springfield, Mo.
"Whenever we play a team that's close to home I play a bit on edge like, 'We've got to win! I've got to show them!'" Deines said. "We played them six days ago and we knew coming in that they were going to come in with more of an edge themselves, so we knew it was going to be a tougher fight coming in."
JBU (4-1) defeated the Crusaders (1-4) 80-56 on Nov. 11 and appeared to be on its way to another blowout after hitting its first six field goal attempts, including a three-pointer by Jordan Martin to push the early margin to 16-9. The lead changed 17 times and the score was tied nine times before the Golden Eagles outscored Evangel 11-3 in the extra period, including a pair of driving buckets by Deines.
"She played like a senior," said JBU coach Jeff Soderquist. "She drove to the basket with confidence and hit shots. She hit some bigs shots there late and really throughout the game."
Evangel rallied to take a short-lived lead (18-17) before JBU's Karina Chandra put together a personal 5-0 run to help her team regain a 22-18 lead at the end of the first quarter.
Thanks to four, three-pointers by Alison Jarrell, the Crusaders were able to take the lead twice during the second quarter, but another three by Martin evened the score up at 36-36 at halftime.
Sydnee Garrett scored 16 of her game-high 29 points in the second half for Evangel, which led by as many as eight points early in the fourth quarter. Soderquist called a key timeout midway through the fourth and could be heard telling his players to "stay calm" as they approached the team huddle. He said he thought they appeared a bit "tight" at that moment.
"I told them to take a deep breath, relax and just go out there and play," Soderquist said. "In the long run, we needed a game like this. Against a team that we were probably supposed to beat, we needed to find ways to win. That's what good teams do."
Three straight defensive stops, including a steal by Baily Cameron that led to a 3-pointer by Deines, helped the Golden Eagles finish off the fourth quarter with a flurry to send the game into overtime with the score knotted at 68-68.
Deines said they weren't as "tight" as they were surprised by Evangel's ability to remain so competitive for four quarters.
"It was more like a, 'what in the world is going on?' because this is a team we should have taken care of by then," Deines said. "Going into overtime we knew we had to pick it up and we knew we had to push it because that transition game helped us in the last game.
"We knew what we had to do to win and we did it."
Men
John Brown 84, Evangel 76
The Golden Eagles (4-1) hit their first five field goals and never trailed en route to an eight-point victory over the Crusaders to open the JBU Basketball Classic on Friday.
They held off Evagel's late rally attempt by drawing three offensive fouls, including a pair of charges taken by Nathan Corder, downt he stretch.
"Those are big," said JBU coach Jason Bechta. "I was really impressed with our ability to make plays like that on the defensive end."
Benjamin Smith and Jake Caudle combined for the first 16 points of the game and finished with 17 points and 16 points, respectively. JBU also got 11 points each from Nathan Corder and Brenton Toussaint, who had a thunderous two-handed dunk off of an alley opp to push the lead to 29-13 midway through the first quarter.
Braden Adams led all scorers with 20 points for the Crusaders (0-6).
Both JBU teams return to action against MidAmerica Nazarene (Kan.) at the JBU Classic today. The women play at 5 p.m., followed by the men's game at 7.
Sports on 11/18/2017