MENOMONIE, Wis. (November 19, 2021) - The Buena Vista men's basketball team led 49-48 at halftime and then used a hot-shooting second half to pull away from UW-Stout on Friday night en route to a big 102-84 road win over the Blue Devils.

Senior Michael Demers poured in a team-high 21 points on 7-of-13 shooting to help lead the charge while sophomore Zane Neubaum followed with a season-high 18 points and six rebounds.  The duo each nailed three long range buckets and combined to go 6-of-13 from beyond the arc.  Demers moves within 29 points of 1,000 in his career and is three 3-pointers shy of moving into ninth on the program's all-time list.

Senior Garrett Sittner chimed in with 13 points and seven rebounds while fellow senior Jacob Privia provided a spark off the bench with 10 points and five boards.  Trey Valentine also came off the bench and was a perfect 3-of-3 from the field and finished with nine points and matched a career-high with nine rebounds.

Buena Vista shot 21-of-29 from the field overall in the second half and was 59.4 percent overall, including a season-high 15 made three-point shots.  

The Blue Devils stormed out to a quick 12-3 lead in the opening two minutes for their largest lead of the game before BVU followed the first media timeout with a 16-7 surge over the next seven minutes to pull even at 19-19.  UW-Stout would regain a six-point cushion at 33-27 but Demers made a pair of free-throws followed by one of his three-point treys to get the Beavers back within 33-32.  Neubaum added a three-pointer of his own to give BVU its first lead of the game at 35-33 and would lead by as much as six in the half before taking the one-point advantage into the half.

BVU came out sizzling right out of the gate in the second half, scoring the first 11 points of the period to build the game's first double-digit lead with less than three minutes gone by.  The Blue Devils got no closer than seven from there as the Beavers led by double digits over the final 13:36 of the contest.  The largest lead of the night was in the closing minutes at 102-82.

Lovell Williams turned in a game-high 31 points for UW-Stout which suffered its first loss of the year (3-1).  The Blue Devils shot just under 39 percent from the field overall and went 12-of-41 from downtown.

Buena Vista improves to 2-1 on the year and will close out the trip on Saturday afternoon with a road game at UW-La Crosse which tips-off at 3:00 p.m.