CHICAGO – Jake Ludwig scored a team-high 21 points and handed out eight assists, but his game-tying layup attempt at the buzzer came up just short as Holy Cross (Ind.) outlasted the Roosevelt men's basketball team in a gritty Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference contest, 72-70, inside the Goodman Center on Saturday.
Korey Ryan added 11 points while Kyle Bumbalough chipped in nine points off the bench for the Lakers (8-12, 4-8 CCAC), who came up just short despite shooting over 55 percent from the field.
Karl Columbus led all scorers with 22 points off the bench for the Saints (11-9, 5-6 CCAC), who held a 19-4 advantage in second-chance points thanks to 16 offensive rebounds.
Roosevelt led by as many as 14 in the second half and nursed a slim three-point lead with 38 seconds left, but Holy Cross cut into that deficit on a bucket by Columbus with around 14 ticks remaining in regulation.
Off the subsequent inbounds play, Ryan was double-teamed in the corner and knocked out of bounds, and the whistle went the way of the Saints as a traveling violation was called with 10.2 seconds left.
Madison McCaffrey would go on to sink a go-ahead three-pointer with 4.2 seconds on the clock, and Roosevelt head coach Joe Griffin quickly called a timeout to draw up a final play.
The ball got into the hands of Ludwig, who had a strong game with an array of layups, jumpers and runners. The rookie guard and Roosevelt's leading scorer (17.2 ppg) sprinted to the cup amid a throng of Saints defenders, and he put up a last-ditch shot that bounced off the rim as the horn sounded in a tough ending for those donning Green and White.
"This one stung," Griffin said after the game. "The glaring statistic was that we gave up 16 offensive rebounds to a team that was dead last in the league in offensive rebounds. That is embarrassing and it puts so much pressure on the other areas of the game. They got 50 percent of their misses back. Every other shot they missed came right back to them to reset their offense. Overall they outrebounded us 38-21 and yet we were right there.
"We did not manage the game well enough down the stretch, having a chance to ice the game with our better free throw shooters, but we were too eager and too aggressive," Griffin said. "Jake got a really good look right at the rim on the last play of the game, and we couldn't have had a better look than that."
Roosevelt had clawed back from multiple eight-point deficits throughout the first half to take a seven-point lead into the break. Ryan and Kevin Priebe closed the half with back-to-back three-point buckets in the final minute of the opening period.
"We missed out on a chance to move up in the standings and get ourselves in top-eight seeding," Griffin concluded. "Now our hill becomes a little steeper to climb."
The Lakers return to the court next Saturday, Jan. 23 against Purdue North Central in LaPorte, Ind. for a 3 p.m. Central game.
