Box Score
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Saint John's basketball made a season-high 11 three-pointers in a 69-61 road win at Hamline on Wednesday, Dec. 8, in Hutton Arena.
HU (2-5, 1-3 MIAC) led by as much as eight (25-17) with 7:01 left in the first half, but the Johnnies (7-2, 4-0 MIAC) closed it with 19-4 run to take a five-point lead (34-29) into the locker room.
The Pipers saw their deficit increase slightly to six points 3.5 minutes into the second half and clawed back to tie it at 43-43 with 11:40 remaining. SJU, however, put together another scoring run - 17-5 - to gain a 12-point lead and led by as little as seven the rest of the way.
Senior guard
Jake Binley (Inver Grove Heights, Minn./Simley) led four Johnnies in double digits with a career-high 17 points in 23 minutes off the bench. He went 4-for-6 from behind the arc, matching his career total for made three-pointers.
Freshman guard
Kooper Vaughn (St. Charles, Minn.) added 12 points, six rebounds and three steals. Sophomore guard
Jared Rainey (Maple Grove, Minn.) and sophomore wing
Ryan Thissen (Rosemount, Minn./Eastview) chipped in 11 points and four assists apiece. Thissen grabbed seven rebounds, while Rainey snagged six in his second start as a Johnnie.
SJU was without senior point guard
Colton Codute (Wayzata, Minn./Orono) and junior post
Mitchell Plombon (St. Cloud, Minn./Cathedral), for the seventh straight game, due to injury.
The MIAC's top free-throw shooting team at 75.6 percent (90-for-119), SJU made only 59.3 percent (16-for-27) of its attempts Wednesday night. The Johnnies shot 54.5 percent (12-for-22) overall and 53.8 percent (7-for-13) from three-point range in the first half, but cooled off after halftime and finished at 43.8 percent (21-for-48) from the floor. The 44-percent (11-for-25) night from long range was the team's best since the season opener (47.6 percent, 10-for-21).
Jake Larson led all scorers with 20 points on 8-for-14 shooting for Hamline. The rest of the team combined to shoot 36.2 percent (17-for-47) from the field. HU stayed in the game thanks to 14 second-chance points and 11 points off 10 SJU turnovers.
The Johnnies return to St. Paul for a 3 p.m. tip-off on Saturday, Dec. 11, at Macalester (4-6, 1-4 MIAC).
