FINAL SCORE: St. Joseph’s 81, Western Kentucky 55

RECORDS: Western Kentucky “Hilltoppers” — 0-3 overall
St. Joseph’s “Hawks” — 1-0 overall

PLAY-BY-PLAY HIGHLIGHTS:

First Half — WKU’s Brian Allenspach opened the scoring with a layup at 18:57 ... St. Joe’s Marvin O’Connor made 1 of 2 free throws, then a layup at 16:21 to give the Hawks their first lead ... Lee Lampley gave Western lead back with three-point play at 15:56 ... Teams trade baskets with Lampley giving WKU final lead at 7-6 with jumper at 14:01 ... Hawks take lead on an O’Connor dunk with 13:49 remaining ... Toppers trail until Lampley layup and Chris Marcus turnaround jumper on the baseline tie game at 19-19 with 6:20 left ... Frank Wilkins gives St. Joe’s the lead for good with a layup and three-pointer
during an 8-0 Hawk run over the next 1:12 ... Wilkins extends lead to high of nine points in the half (29-20) with layup at 2:30 ... Hilltoppers close gap on baskets from Derek Robinson and Lampley to make score 29-24 with 1:21 left ... Bill Phillips closes scoring in half for St. Joe’s with dunk with 10 seconds remaining ... Hawks finish half with 12-5 spurt over final 5:48.

Second Half — Robinson opened the half with a three-pointer to cut the Topper deficit to four points at 19:20, but the Hawks respond with 12 unanswered points over the next 2:35 ... Tim Brown makes two threes during the
run ... Nashon McPherson ends streak with jumper at 16:05 ... Wilkins scores seven straight points for St. Joe’s to push lead to 50-30 with 13:39 left ... Trailing 56-34 at 12:09, Toppers go on 12-4 run to cut lead to 14 points with
9:38 to go ... Lampley scores five points during the spurt with layup and three pointer ... Teams trade buckets, then Hawks score next 11 points over 2:03 to extend to 73-48 advantage with 6:39 left ... Lampley ends run with a
pair of free throws at 6:09 for final points ... Brown three with 5:49 left gives Hawks biggest lead of game at 76-50 ... Filip Videnov hits three-pointer at 5:09 to score in double figures for second straight game ... Erick Woods’ layup matches St. Joe’s biggest lead (79-53) with 2:16 left ... Tremain Rowles scores Toppers’ final points on jumper at 0:39 ... St. Joe’s Ryan Leib has steal and layup to close scoring with 24 seconds remaining.

COACHES’ QUOTES:
WKU Head Coach Dennis Felton — “We’re learning some lessons. We’re playing a lot of young guys, and they’re learning. In the end, I still think we’re going to be a very good team at the end of the season. ... I was pleased with our effort and intensity against Evansville on Tuesday, but we didn’t come out with that today. ... I thought we played better offensively. We got good shots, we just missed some open jumpers. ... They hurt us a lot of ways. They played well, with a good level of confidence. Before the game, I could see that they were anxious to get the game on. We didn’t challenge them enough to
find out how good they are. ... We let their shooters get by us for some big threes. They hit two straight threes (with about six minutes left in the first half) and it gave them some breathing space. ... Lee did some good things for us today, he carried us on offense.”

NOTES — Lampley — who tied for team-high scoring honors once as a junior last season — has paced Western in scoring in all three games in 1999 ... Nineteen points for Lampley was a career-high — 17 in the season opener at Southern Illinois on Nov. 20 was previous high ... This was the first meeting between the two schools since an 88-83 Hilltopper victory in Philadelphia on Dec. 20, 1952 ... The win was St. Joe’s first in six attempts against the Toppers ... Western coaches had a couple of ties to St. Joe’s — head coach Dennis Felton was an assistant coach during the 1991-92 season, and assistant
coach Kevin Baggett played for the Hawks from 1985-89.

NEXT GAME — The Hilltoppers continue a three-game road trip at Akron Tuesday
at 7 p.m. CST ... St. Joseph’s plays host to Tulsa at 7 p.m. EST Monday.