Orowo Eleyae (SR/Houston, Texas) put on a show, helping author what the Celts hope will be a string of wins at home.
Eleyae scored 31 points on 11 of 13 shooting as the University of St. Thomas men's basketball team beat Lyon College, 71-55, Wednesday at the Jerabeck Activity & Athletic Center. The win moved the Celts to 4-2. The Scots fell to 3-2.
Eleyae was 8 of 12 from the free throw line, while grabbing seven rebounds and blocking two shots in a dominant performance.
"He's a mismatch problem because they have to come get him on the corner with bigs," St. Thomas head coach Anthony Medina said, "but he's so good at putting the ball down and getting into the cracks of the defense that it's really hard to keep him out of the paint. He's shot it well from three this year, which he hasn't done in the past, but that element has really expanded his game and made him better."
Nathan Thormaehlen (JR/Katy, Texas) buried back-to-back threes – the second with 16:23 to go – to give St. Thomas a 40-29 lead. Sam Flores (SR/El Paso, Texas) canned a triple at the 12:09 mark to extend the Celts lead to 15.
Then Eleyae took over, scoring on five straight possessions.
Lennard Robinson (JR/Houston, Texas) fed Eleyae on consecutive trips down the floor – the first a lob underneath that Eleyae converted while gliding toward the hoop to put St. Thomas ahead 51-37. Eleyae then scored on a feed from Kennard Robinson (JR/Houston, Texas) before throwing down a follow-up jam off an offensive rebound. Eleyae scored again on the next possession on a dish from Lennard Robinson to make it a 16-point game.
"He is so capable of making plays like that and runs like that by himself when the ball touches his hands in good situations because he can finish at a really high level," Medina said.
Lyon whittled the lead down to 11 before Paul Taulton (JR/Pearland, Texas) scored on a reverse lay-in, and Lennard Robinson sank two free throws with 1:36 to play to pad the Celts lead. Eleyae put the icing on the cake when he threw down an alley-oop from Lennard Robinson on the Celts next trip down the floor.
Flores finished with 12 points on 4 of 9 three-point shooting. Lennard Robinson had 10 points, eight assists and four rebounds. Thormaehlen had nine points and a block, going 3 of 4 from long distance.
Emir Sabic scored 17 points for the Scots, and Blake Bradshaw added nine.
Eleyae scored 15 points on 5-for-5 shooting in the first half as the Celts took a 33-28 into intermission. UST shot 44 percent in the first half, going 11 of 25 from the field. Lyon was 9 of 26 for 34.6 percent.
"They're extremely consistent offensively," Medina said of Lyon. "They run the system that we knew about, and the question was can we defend it and handle their post presence consistently? Because we didn't allow them to get the post men going, we forced them to play on the perimeter and kept their shooting percentage down for the game, which was good for us. Little runs came because we got stops, and we got buckets here and there to create runs."
"We spend a lot of time preaching (defense) and talking about it and trying to force our way into stops. For us, our stability in terms of wins and losses, and stability in terms of owning runs in the game, is just going to be getting stops. Offensively we really try to give the guys freedom to play confidently and be themselves. It shows with Ro in his ability to go on scoring runs . Defensively, we are trying to be solid and continue the tradition of strong defensive teams here at UST."
The win was the Celts' first at the JAAC this season, and it signaled the start to a six-game homestand. St. Thomas returns home 2 p.m. Saturday against Concordia University-Texas.
"We have five more at home, and we're hoping we leave with all five of them," Medina said. "Our goal coming in as a team was to leave here 6-0 in this home stretch, really leading us into conference and try to build some momentum."
