Box Score
GETTYSBURG, Pa. – Senior Brad Billmeier
(Pennington, NJ/Hopewell Valley) scored all of his
career-high 15 points in the second half to key Gettysburg’s
74-59 victory over Dickinson in Centennial Conference (CC)
men’s basketball action on Saturday.
Limited to two first-half minutes due
to foul trouble, Billmeier made his final home game a memorable
one by hitting 7 of 8 shots and dishing out five assists after
halftime. Down by as many as 14 points in the first half,
the Bullets (13-12, 9-4 CC) shot 70 percent from the floor
after the break to outscore the Red Devils 43-27 and lock
up their third consecutive berth in the CC postseason.
Gettysburg, two-time defending CC champions,
will face Johns Hopkins in a CC West Division second-place
tie-breaker game on Monday in Baltimore. Game time is 7 p.m.
The Blue Jays reached the postseason with a 68-65 victory
against Franklin & Marshall on Saturday.
David Glaser (West Chester, PA/Malvern
Prep) led five Bullets in double figures with 18 points
and also pulled down a team-best nine rebounds. Ryan
Page (Silver Spring, MD/St. John’s College [DC]) matched
a career high with 15 points in the win.
CC rebounding leader Jon Schwadron
scored 12 points and pulled down 12 boards in his final collegiate
game while Brandon Karpo poured in a team-high
17 points for Dickinson (7-17, 2-11 CC). Matt Keys
added 13 in the losing effort.
Trailing 29-15 with 5:53 remaining in
the first half, Gettysburg turned the tables by scoring 38
of the game’s next 48 points over a 15-minute stretch spanning
both halves.
Four straight points from Glaser pulled
the Bullets within 29-19. After a free throw from Matt
Hart, Page drilled a 3-pointer and Glaser scored six
points to key a 12-2 burst to the end of the half that cut
the Dickinson lead to 32-31.
Freed from the bench after halftime,
Billmeier quickly got into the act, converting a pair of layups
in the first 1:37 to give Gettysburg a 35-32 lead.
Schwadron knotted the game for the final
time at 37 with 16:05 left, but Billmeier assisted on a Page
layup to put the Bullets ahead to stay on their next trip
down the floor. Page set up a fast-breaking Doug Loveland
(Oceanport, NJ/Christian Brothers Acad.) to make it
41-37, then added back-to-back buckets to key a 12-0 run that
pushed the lead to 49-37 with 12:43 left.
Billmeier’s layup with 9:33 left made
it 55-41 and Gettysburg led by no fewer than 10 points the
rest of the way. The senior center provided the crowd with
one final highlight moment in the closing minutes, stealing
the ball in the Bullets’ defensive zone, then running the
floor and throwing a behind-the-back pass to Dami Oloruntoba
(Glenn Dale, MD/Eleanor Roosevelt) for the easy layup.
Oloruntoba finished with 12 points while
Todd Brady (Hancock, NH/ConVal) added 10 in
the winning effort. Thanks to their 70-percent performance
in the second half, Gettysburg shot 56 percent from the floor
on the day.
Billmeier, shooting 12-for-14 with 11
assists in his last two games, also collected three rebounds
and two steals. In addition to his 15 points, Page set career
highs with five steals and four assists.
The Bullets will be making their fourth
appearance in the CC postseason. Gettysburg reached the CC
championship game in 1996 before winning back-to-back titles
in 2001 and 2002, the first program to accomplish the feat.
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