BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Josh Bedwell scored 21 points off the bench to fuel a Samford offense which shot 54.3 percent from the floor and 42.3 percent from long range to defeat the visiting Elon Phoenix by a 69-47 margin in Southern Conference men's basketball action on Saturday afternoon. The Bulldogs saw their record climb to 13-13 overall and 8-9 in SoCon play while Elon dropped to 8-16, 5-11 on the year.
Samford raced out to a 7-0 lead before
Josh Bonney's three got Elon on the board just under three minutes into play. After the Phoenix had closed to within three at 10-7 on a
Monty Sanders jumper, the Bulldogs used a 9-2 run to build a 19-9 advantage when Bedwell hit the first of five triples of the night at the 8:07 mark. Samford would eventually push its lead to as many as 15 points before seeing the Phoenix score the half's final five points, but the Bulldogs held a 31-21 edge after 20 minutes.
Elon trimmed its deficit to seven points at 35-28 after Sanders converted an old-fashioned three-point play with 15:55 remaining.
The Bulldogs answered right back with an Andy King free throw followed by a Trey Montgomery lay-up to push the lead back to 10 with 15:04 left.
Brett James and Sanders hit back-to-back jumpers on the other end and the Phoenix had the margin to just six points before Josh Davis made a three and Bedwell connected on two more from long range in a span of just 58 seconds. Bonney finally stopped the run with a jumper with 8:36 to play which put Elon down 47-34.
Another Davis three followed before Montgomery and Bedwell put in lay-ups to build the lead to 20 points at 54-34 with exactly seven minutes left on the clock.
Sanders led Elon with 13 points while James ended the day with 12 markers to move past Tom McGee into 16th place on Elon's all-time scoring chart. The senior now has 1,247 career points. He also blocked one shot, the 100th rejection of his career. James' six rebounds led all players.
Joining Bedwell with double figure scoring outputs for Samford were Davis (16 points) and Montgomery (15). Jim Griffin's five rebounds led the team.
Elon is off until Thursday night when the Phoenix returns home to take on Western Carolina at 7 p.m.
-- ELON --
