Air Force beats Evansville on late free throw

Air Force forward Derek Brooks grabbed the rebound, threw an outlet to Michael Lyons, and Lyons ran off to win the game.

Lyons is just a sophomore for Air Force, but with the score tied against Evansville and less than 10 seconds remaining, he didn’t hesitate. Lyons had Taylor Broekhuis trailing the play, but went hard to the rim — just as Air Force coaches want in that situation — and got fouled. He hit the first of two free throws, and Air Force forced a miss at the buzzer to hold on to a 57-56 win against Evansville at Clune Arena.

“I wanted to draw the foul, because I thought I could make at least one free throw,” Lyons said. “I was going to the basket.”

Air Force is 5-1 with four straight wins. Sunday’s victory was against a team that was coming off an overtime win at Butler. The Falcons played good defense inside the 3-point line and got big offensive contributions from Lyons and Broekhuis.

Broekhuis came into the game having hit just 2 of 35 career 3-point attempts. Yet, Air Force built its plan around Broekhuis hitting 3-pointers, because it knew Evansville wouldn’t have its big men guard him so far away from the basket.

“The coaches told us if I didn’t hit shots from the top of the key, it was going to be tough for us to win,” Broekhuis said. “I had to buckle down and make them.”

Broekhuis came through with five 3-pointerss. His final 3 came in the final 2 minutes and broke a tie.

Evansville stayed in the game by hitting 10-of-18 3-point attempts. The Falcons allowed the Aces to hit just 11-of-37 inside the line. Evansville had a chance to take the lead in the final 10 seconds but missed, and Lyons capitalized with his go-ahead free throw. Then Brooks played tight defense on Kenny Harris, whose final shot went off the backboard at the buzzer.

Lyons scored a season-best 20 points, and Broekhuis had 18 points, a career high. On the other end, Air Force had nine blocks, its most in a game since getting nine against Navy on Dec. 9, 1995.

“Defensively, in the first half we were really good,” coach Jeff Reynolds said. “In the second half we weren’t as good, but we had just enough to survive.”