St. Bonifacius, Minn. – The Polars Men's Basketball team faced off with the Bethel Royals falling by a score of 77-71 in overtime.

The first few minutes of play were scoreless with Jacob Van Dam getting the first points of the game. The Polars found a couple more buckets from Carter Behne and Alec Testerman to push the lead to 12-4. The lead was lengthened to 22-11 after a few Royals turnovers and some Crown buckets.

The Royals marched right back in the late goings of the first keeping the score within 4. A late jumper from Jacob Masek and free throw from Van Dam pushed it to 32-25 and that's how the half would finish. Crown shot 41.2 percent in the first half and led for the majority of the first half.

Early in the second half the Polars jumped out to a 44-33 lead after a pair of deep threes from Masek and Van Dam. The Royals fought right back into it clawing their way to within three with 6 minutes to play. With 30 seconds to go Micah Ladd made one of two free throws to push the score to 63-60 in the Polars favor. Bethel knocked down a three with 20 seconds to go to tie the game at 63. Two last second shots from Crown were no good and the game pushed to overtime.

Overtime found the Polars pushing back out in front by four but a few late turnovers from Crown led to Royals buckets and the Polars fell 77-71.

Jacob Van Dam led the scoring for Crown totaling 18 points. Micah Ladd added 13 points and 3 steals. Jacob Masek once again had a monster day on the glass with 16 total rebounds and 10 points for a double double.

The Polars as a team shot 36% from the field and 25.9% from three-point range. Crown struggled from the free throw line shooting only 52.6% from the charity stripe.

Crown falls to 7-4 on the season and heads to California for their final two nonconference games of the season against the Whittier Poets and the La Verne Leopards. These games will take place at 9pm CST on Monday December 19^th and 4pm CST on Tuesday December 20^th.