STORM LAKE, Iowa (Dec. 10, 2022) - Buena Vista junior Zane Neubaum scored 19 points and grabbed six rebounds while Michael Santich added 10 points and six assists to help lead the Buena Vista men's basketball team to a 64-52 home victory over Luther College on Saturday evening.

Neubaum did most of his damage from long distance where he went a season-best 4-of-8 while the rest of the team went a combined 5-of-28. He also made a team-high five free-throws while the team was just 11-of-20.

Ryan Mendoza and Gunner Reed turned in nine points apiece with Mendoza grabbing six rebounds and Reed seven. Noah Valdez came off the bench and chipped in with career-highs in both points (8) and rebounds (10). Jackson Jones made his first career start and followed up his career night on Wednesday with five points and five rebounds.

Mat Rohden scored a team-leading 13 points and grabbed 11 boards for Luther, which dropped to 1-8 overall (0-4 A-R-C). 

BVU held a narrow 16-14 advantage with eight minutes left in the opening half before closing the period on an 18-6 run to take a 34-20 lead into the locker room. The lead grew to 15 on multiple times early in the second half before Luther closed the gap to within eight at 41-33 at the 14:34 mark. A layup by Reed then helped ignite a 17-6 BVU run that gave the Beavers their largest lead of the contest at 58-39 with six minutes remaining.

Luther did manage to hang around by responding with an 8-0 spurt to cut the deficit to 11 with two minutes to go, but that was as close as the Norse could get.

Buena Vista snaps its three-game overall losing streak and moves back to .500 on the season at 5-5 and picks up its first A-R-C victory to improve to 1-3 in league play. Up next for the Beavers will be a non-conference home game against Bethany Lutheran on Saturday, December 17 with tip-off set for 2:00 p.m.