The Buena Vista men's basketball raced out to a quick 10-0 lead and never looked back on Thursday night, en route to a commanding 99-68 home victory over visiting Bethany Lutheran College.

Senior Cole Darrow scored a game-high 19 points for the Beavers, while sophomore Kennedy Drey was right behind with a career-high 18.  The pair each grabbed seven rebounds.  Seniors Brett Heitkamp and Tyler Kastantin both came off the bench to add 10 points apiece, while combing to go 9-of-11 from the field.  Fellow senior Nick Wuebker got his first start of the year and added nine rebounds and three blocked shots.

BVU was efficient overall on the offensive end, shooting 62.2 percent, including 18-of-30 from downtown.  It also had 33 assists on 41 made field goals.  Five different players dished out at least four helpers, led by a game-high six from senior Grady Gallagher.

A total of 13 players scored in the game for Buena Vista, while all 16 players who dressed played at least two minutes.

Darrow and Drey combined for the first 10 points of the game which all came less than two minutes into the contest.  Back-to-back three's from the Vikings made it 10-6, but that was really all the momentum that Bethany Lutheran had all night.

Drey added another layup for BVU followed by consecutive buckets from Heitkamp to push the lead back up to double-digits.  Two straight long range makes from Gallagher gave BVU a 22-11 lead and the Beavers maintained that cushion until Drey made another layup to make it 34-20 with just less than seven minutes to play.  That led the team on a game-changing 27-2 run over the next three minutes en rooute to a 56-29 halftime advantage.

The Vikings, now 0-9 on the year, never got closer than 22 points in the second half, despite shooting over 51 percent from the field, compared to only 31.4 percent during the first 20 minutes.

The win improves BVU to 5-4 overall.  The team is now off for the holiday break and will return to the court on December 29 when they open play at the Albright Tournament in Reading, Pa.  It tips-off against Delaware Valley at 2:00pm ET.