Ball State men's basketball had a rough outing on Nov. 29, only scoring 37 points in a loss to Lafayette. On Nov. 30, the Cardinals completely flipped the script, scoring 96 points in a win over LeMoyne.
Head coach Michael Lewis said that he cannot overstate how proud he is of the effort that his team gave to bounce back.
Lewis served as an assistant coach on UCLA's 2021 Final Four team, and he said that even coaching that run, he has never been prouder of a performance than he was in this win.
The team's third win of the season came after losing 80-73 to Monmouth and losing 55-37 to Lafayette. Their 96-85 win over Le Moyne concluded a three-day trip to Pennsylvania.
In the Cardinals' win, it was their first time outrebounding an opponent since Nov. 7 against Mansfield. The Cardinals grabbed 12 more boards than Le Moyne and a bulk of those came from freshman forward Preston Copeland.
The freshman started for the first time this season against Lafayette and had the best game of his first season in his second consecutive start against Le Moyne. Copeland had ten points on 4-7 from the field while also grabbing 16 of the team's 38 rebounds.
"He has an extremely high ceiling," Lewis said. "His athleticism, his ability to move, he's kind of like a blank canvas as far as what you can do with that and work with him."
Early in the second half against Le Moyne, Ball State went down by as many as eight points. But the Cardinals fought back to take the lead just a few minutes later.
"They very easily could've shut it down and packed it in, [but] they stayed together and made a lot of plays," Lewis said.
After taking the lead with nine minutes to go in the half, the Cardinals held a lead the rest of the way and controlled the game until the final buzzer.
Lewis said that it would be difficult to talk about all of the players that played at a high level against Le Moyne. But a player in particular that made huge contributions in the game was senior guard Juwan Maxey.
The transfer guard from Youngstown State had his best performance of the season, scoring 27 points and splashing in seven threes. This comes after a few rough shooting performances to start the season, but Lewis is confident that a performance like this can spiral into even more.
"When you're a shooter like he is, when that ball doesn't go in it's easy to lose confidence," Lewis said. "Normally when your shooter sees those things go in, nights like tonight happen and they continue to happen."
The Cardinals' loss against Lafayette was arguably their toughest loss of the season. The team shot 22% from the field and ten percent from three, and it capped off a five-game losing streak. Lewis said that the team went through a lot, but that he is proud of how they turned it around with a win.
"To be able to flush that and to be able to come back and perform the way that they did today is special," Lewis said.
The Cardinals will be back in action on Dec. 3, when they will go on the road to take on Evansville.