MEMPHIS-The Christian Brothers University Bucs tied a school record with 20 three-pointers, shooting 14-of-17 from beyond the arc in the second half, as they rolled to a 90-74 win over Harding Monday night at Canale Arena.

HOW IT HAPPENED:
• The Bisons (2-3) jumped to an early 7-2 lead on a JV Long jumper, and a Gabriel Divic triple capped a 6-0 burst to give Harding its largest lead of the night at 19-10 with 11:48 remaining in the first half.
• CBU (4-1) answered with a 15-2 run to take a 25-21 lead on a pair of Jacob Lyons (Hernando, Miss./Christian Brothers HS) free throws with 6:41 remaining in the half.
• Back-to-back triples by Joe Laravie (Kettering, Ohio/Alter HS) and Luke Rudy (Cincinnati, Ohio/Oak Hills HS) were part of an 8-0 burst to rebuild a 33-25 lead the Bucs would not relinquish.
• CBU opened the second half with a 9-2 run to take a 47-34 lead on a Laravie triple with 17:49 remaining.
• Three straight triples, one by Luke Rudy (Cincinnati, Ohio/Oak Hills HS) and two by Brad Miller (Cincinnati, Ohio/Elder HS), extended the CBU lead to 61-41 with 14:03 remaining, and Harding never came closer than 12 points again.

KEY STATS:
• Laravie scored 28 points, shooting 10-of-17 overall including 7-of-10 from beyond the arc as he played 39 minutes.
• Miller scored 18, all in the second half, as he shot 6-of-7 from beyond the arc with five assists in 34 minutes.
• Lyons scored 13, all in the first half, to go with six rebounds and three assists.
• Adam Dieball (Cincinnati, Ohio/Lakota East HS) narrowly missed his second career triple double, dishing out a season-high 13 assists with 10 points and nine rebounds. He also grabbed three steals in 36 minutes.
• Rudy added 11 points with four assists, three rebounds and two steals. 
• The Bucs finished 20-of-32 (62.5 percent) from three-point range, including 14-of-17 (82.4 percent) in the second half. For the game, CBU shot 56.1 percent overall to the Bisons' 52.7 percent (29-of-55).
• Harding out-rebounded the Bucs 28-26, including a 5-2 edge in offensive boards. Each team committed 10 turnovers.
• The Bucs dished out 29 assists on 32 made baskets.

NOTABLE:
• The Bucs' 20 three-pointers tied a school record set in a win over Williams Baptist Jan. 6, 2005.
• CBU's 29 assists tied for fourth-most in school history.
• CBU's 62.5 percent three-point shooting as a team was good for sixth in school history.
• Dieball's 13 assists tied for seventh-most in a game in school history.
• Laravie's seven triples tied for seventh-most in a game in school history, and Miller's six tied for 17th-most.
• Miller's 85.7 percent three-point shooting tied for seventh in school history, and Laravie's 70.0 percent tied for 18th. 

HEAD COACH MIKE NIENABER'S THOUGHTS:
On second-half shooting (14/17 3FG):
"It makes life easier. I'm a heck of a coach when we go 20-for-32 from three. We talked about it at halftime, cause I said when we're sitting there with a lot of things in the first half were ugly, but we kind of righted that ship, and got that lead. And I said to our guys, if somebody would have told me before the game that Adam (Dieball) was going to have zero points, and be 0-for-4 from three and not even have an inside shot, going into the game, I'm not sure I would have wanted to know what the final score was."

But the thing is, we're ahead (at halftime) because of the things were getting. They made the decision, a good coaching decision, to take Adam away. When he got the ball, he was doubled immediately, and he had to give it up. And he gave it up. Jake got a couple of lay-ups. We really probably shot better from three than we did on layups at times, I thought. We got good looks on cuts and things, and missed several of them. But, at least they were good shots. And there's no doubt that Joe (Laravie) played unbelievably. He was especially big in the first half, I mean he was big throughout the game. And he's playing under the weather, throwing up at halftime. And I'm thinking, this guy is giving us everything, every minute, playing through it. He's an unbelievable player."

"One of the problems we have, and it's a good problem, we want to get Nick (Deifel) in the game as much as possible. And both of our assistants before the game were saying we need to get Nick in quicker. But I'm like, guys who are we taking out? Sometimes it falls on Luke, sometimes it's Brad, sometimes it's Jake. But every one of those guys, there's a tendency, because Brad is one of those smaller guys, sometimes he gets in trouble defensively. There's a tendency to think that we're better defensively with Nick."

"Usually I'm thinking that we take Brad out at some point, just to give him a few minutes, because I don't want to take him out and just sit him out. But, he carried us. He started making shots and they're picking their poison. You've got to look at our last couple of games, Brad hasn't had big numbers, so if I'm playing us, maybe that's the guy I cheat off of. But, there was a couple of times that Adam hit him, because his man was just leaving him. And you really can't leave any of our guys open, you know?"

"And if they leave Jake, which is another option that I would look at, okay well Jake is probably going to go hard at the basket which is what he did in the first half and get layups, like he did. So I think we're really good at that."

"Their post players were really effective. We were not stopping their post game guys one-on-one either. But when we finally got guys going aggressively (on defense) we got some turnovers. We got the ball knocked out."

"We've had so much experience with Adam now for three years of him being doubled, I think we were finally getting better about making the reads and getting the good shot off of getting him the ball. And I felt like in the first half, we weren't getting it to Adam enough to let them double and do what they were going to do."

"Adam was getting the ball out at the top all of the time instead of getting it into the post and running our action to get him the ball either off of the secondary break or getting it off other action when we go five up and back cut and roll him in there. That's where we get him the ball, and when we got him the ball there, a lot of good things happened. But we went several trips where we would just make a couple of passes around the perimeter and shoot a three and Adam never touched the ball in the post. And that is not a good plan for us."

On the assist-rate tonight (29 on 32 made FG):
"Yeah. I mean we hit threes. When we're making threes like that, we're really hard to beat. (Harding) did a good job of hanging in there, especially the way Brad was knocking them down in the second half. It was like every mistake they made, we were making them pay. Luke (Rudy) had a few, he got going. Look you've got Luke at 3-for-5, Joe at 7-for-10, and Brad at 6-for-7 (3FG), what else can you say?"

On Nick Deifel's (Cincinnati, Ohio/Oak Hills HS) shot-clock beating three-pointer:
"When that one went in, I thought some nights it is just meant to be. That is one of those, when you're playing defensively, working your tail off to keep us from getting a shot off, do a great job of not giving us a good look, and then Nick banks it in. So, it was just one of those nights. And we needed it after our last game."

On the upcoming schedule:
"The one thing I said to the guys, and it's another thing that I think kept this game a lot closer early, is the points allowed off of fastbreak. When we come down, we're getting 29 assists on 32 baskets. We're passing the ball and moving the ball and moving people. And we have to execute to get a shot. But they get a rebound, the guy goes coast-to-coast. They're not getting assists, because we're letting guys get rebounds and go all the way. And I'm telling the guys, what we have to do to get a basket, and when we miss a shot, and maybe we get one guy back (on defense). But we can't stop a guy one-on-one going at the basket. So, the thing is that I told them at halftime, it's going to be really sad if we come back in here after this game and have lost tonight and we watch film tomorrow and see you guys jogging back when we give it up, and not sprinting back on defense. Every game we play, we're playing people capable of beating us."

"I think it's hard mentally, even for some of our older guys to say, hey everybody was (emotionally) up for Lincoln-Memorial. They're nationally ranked, they've been to the national championship, they've been to the Elite Eight three times. They're one of the best programs over the last five, ten years. We're really up. Lane comes in. You don't show respect that needs to be shown and you get your butt handed to you. We have to understand that. Every night. The good news is, that West Florida and Valdosta State, we can win down there. We don't have to play out of this world. We don't even have to shoot like we shot tonight to win those games. It would help. I'll take it. But, we don't have to play crazy good, we just have to play solid. We have to play hard. We can't give up baskets like we gave up here tonight, and beat good teams. The only way we survived it tonight, is how well we shot it, because a lot of times, we were answering their layups with threes. But most nights, that's going to get you beat. When you give it up that easy, that's something we've got to address. We've got to get better. And we know that is our biggest weakness. And everybody knows. I'm not sharing any secrets. Everybody knows to beat us you have to drive."

WHAT'S NEXT:
After wrapping up a four-game homestand, the Bucs play six of their next seven on the road, beginning with their GSC opener at reigning conference champion West Florida Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. Their next home game is Saturday, Dec. 15, when they host Auburn Montgomery at 3 p.m.