BEMIDJI, MN – Scoring a game-winning basket off an offensive rebound for the second time this season, a putback by Lucas Mayer with two seconds left in the contest lifted the University of Mary men's basketball team to a 55-53 victory at Bemidji State University. The Marauders scored the last nine points in the game to claim the victory.
 
Trailing 53-46 with just over three minutes remaining in the game, the Marauders started clicking on both ends of the court. Gertautas Urbonavicius opened the rally with a 3-pointer at 2:52 to close the gap to 53-49. The Marauders stifled the next Beavers possession when Kam Warrens blocked a layup.
 
After neither team could score on each of their next possessions, Urbonavicius made his presence felt again, draining another clutch three with 1:11 on the clock to pull UMary within 53-52.
 
Urbonavicius followed with a big play on defense, hauling down a rebound of a missed Bemidji State 3-point attempt. With an opportunity to take the lead, a Warrens layup effort was blocked and the officials ruled the ball went out of play off the Marauders.
 
Now with just 24 seconds to play, UMary fouled Dalton Albrecht. Given a 1-and-1, Albrecht missed his first free throw with the rebound hauled down by Meyer to give the Marauders another chance to take the lead.
 
Deciding to settle for one shot, Matthew Johnson launched an errant three attempt with five seconds in the game. Fighting through traffic, Mayer tapped in the miss for the lead and was fouled. The forward from Bismarck, ND, nailed the free throw to make the UMary lead 55-53.
 
With two seconds left, BSU was unable to get off a shot as Johnson stole the ball just before the final horn to secure the UMary road win.
 
Mayer was the hero for the second time in two weeks. At home against Concordia-St. Paul on January 21, Mayer rebounded a miss by Johnson and put the ball back with 4.9 seconds left in the game for a 68-66 UMary win.
 
In a game of two different halves, the Marauders led 29-20 after the first period. UMary eventually grabbed a 12-point lead at 37-25. Bemidji State soon made its more, outscoring the Marauders 22-4 to claim a 53-46 lead, setting up more late game heroics for UMary.
 
One night after leading UMary with 16 points, Urbonavicius was again the Marauders scoring leader. He posted 18 points while drilling 4-of-6 trey attempts. He also had four rebounds.
 
Davids Atelbauers added 10 points making both his trey and free throw attempts.
 
Mayer finished with nine points and six rebounds.
 
John Sutherland led BSU with 14 points and nine rebounds. Travis Bianco added 13 points.
 
The Marauders (8-14 overall, 7-10 Northern Sun) forced 18 turnovers and committed just 13 to help offset the 39-29 Beavers rebounding edge. Both teams attempted nine free throws with UMary making seven and BSU (7-14, 4-13) just five. Offensively the Marauders shot just 38.5% from the field while the Beavers made just 39% of their shots.
 
With this four-game road trip now over, the Marauders return home Friday and Saturday, Feb. 11-12. UMary hosts #7 Minnesota Duluth on Friday at 7:30 pm and St. Cloud State on Saturday at 5:30 pm with both games at the McDowell Activity Center.
 
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