WINONA LAKE – The foundation on which the team builds. That’s how Grace College men’s basketball coach Jim Kessler described Bruce Grimm Jr. and Greg Miller following Friday night’s 86-74 win over Missouri Baptist. “They’re the foundation on which we build,” said Kessler, whose team was hosting the Hoops For Hope Classic at the Orthopaedic Capital Center. “They’re a junior and a senior, and they were both big tonight.” Grimm, a senior, scored a game-high 20 points, dished out 11 assists and made six steals. Kessler is fond of calling Grimm the team’s bus driver, and the 6-foot-2 point guard and former Rochester High School standout certainly guided the Lancers Friday night. “Bruce is very capable of doing things like that every game,” said Kessler. “We ask a lot of him, and he came up big tonight. He scored 20 points, but he also had 11 assists and six steals, that’s pretty big.” Miller, a 6-6 junior who graduated as North Miami High School’s all-time leading scorer, also posted a double-double for Grace. Miller had 10 points and eight rebounds in the first half, and finished the game with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Senior Elliot Smith and freshman Kyle Fillman added 14 and 13 points, respetively, as the Lancers improved to 2-1 on the season. “We played pretty deep into the lineup tonght, and we got contributions from a lot of people,” said Kessler. Nine different players scored for Grace, which is currently ranked No. 8 in the NAIA Division II national poll. Six of them scored at least seven points. For Missouri Baptist, an NAIA Division I team that fell to 2-4 on the season, there were four players that scored in double figures. LeAndre Johnson led the Spartans with 19 points, while Garrison Plummer and Kalvin Lewis scored 14 and 12, respectively, and Adrian Kuyinu chipped in with 11 points. The Spartans outrebounded Grace 40-26, something Kessler wasn’t happy about. A positive in the veteran coach’s eye, however, was the fact his team dished out 22 assists and only committed eight turnovers in the game. “We only turned the ball over eight times, four in each half,” said Kessler. “That was a big factor in the game. It wasn’t pretty, we didn’t shoot particularly well, but we didn’t turn it over a lot. I’m pleased with that.” The Lancers were 33 of 62 (53 percent) from the field overall and 10 of 23 from the arc. Missouri Baptist was 29 of 59 (49 percent) from the field overall and 4 of 10 from three-point range. There were four games – two men’s and two women’s contests – as part of Day 1 of the Hoops For Hope Classic, which raises funds for the Kosciusko County Cancer Care Fund. There will be four more games today, beginning at 10 a.m. when the women from Indiana Wesleyan and Rochester College square off. At noon, Huntington University’s men’s team will play Missouri Baptist. The Grace College Lady Lancers will play Union College at 2 p.m., while the Grace men will play Robert Morris at 4 p.m.
