St. Bonifacius, MN - The Polars Men's Basketball team faced off with the Martin Luther Knights on Friday night and came out on top by a score of 88-62.

In the first four minutes the Knights jumped out in front as they took a 10-5 lead. Back to back buckets evened the game back up. Six lead changes later in the first half saw Jacob Van Dam even up the score at 24-24 with 7:47 to play in the first half. The last seven minutes was a battle as Martin Luther took a small lead and had it cut short once again by Crown and the game was neck and neck going into the break as Crown led 38-37 at half.

The second half was all Polars as Crown found their offense early as they extended a nine point lead after baskets from a host of Polars. Crown never looked back from there and continued to rack up the points going up 20 points before a late few buckets extended the lead to a final score of 88-62. The Polars doubled the Knights second half points with 50 compared to 25 from Martin Luther.

Tyrus Buckner led the scoring with 19 points and also had 10 rebounds for his third double-double of the season. Cade Carroll shortly followed with 15 points and 17 total rebounds for his sixth double-double of the year. Jacob Masek earned 11 points, 6 assists, and had 9 rebounds. Four different Polars earned multiple blocks as Buckner, Masek, PJ Ebeling, and Tyler Smith all had 2 blocks.

Crown as a team shot 43% from the field going 34-79 and only 18.5% from three point range going 5-27. The Polars managed 54 points in the paint and 22 points off of turnovers.

The Polars move to 11-3 on the season and stay undefeated in conference play as they are 4-0 in UMAC play. The Polars will face off with the other undefeated team in the UMAC in Bethany Lutheran tomorrow Saturday, January 13th at 4:45pm.