The Lancaster Bible College Men's Basketball team played their first of two games in San Juan, Puerto Rico as part of the Puerto Rico Clasico, taking down Augsburg University by a score of 75-59 on Tuesday afternoon. The Chargers improve to 4-7 overall and 1-1 in the United East, while the Auggies fall to 3-7 overall and 1-5 in the MIAC.
 
How it Happened: Augsburg hit a three to open the scoring, but freshman Connor Storr made a contested layup to get the Chargers on the board. Both teams struggled to score early, but Luke Rumbaugh finished three-point play to cut the deficit to one. The Chargers grabbed their first lead of the day on a layup from Daniel King, then seniors Seth Beers and Grant Sareyka boosted that lead to five on a pair of layups. A free throw from Isaiah Mitchell gave LBC their largest lead of the half at 21-12, but the Auggies went point-for-point for the rest of the half to send the game to halftime with a 31-28 lead for the Chargers.
 
The Auggies brought the game within one on the first possession, but Sareyka hit his first 3-pointer of the game to bump it up to four. Rumbaugh and Beers converted on fast breaks, then Storr and Maureon Tisdale-Couch made layups to give LBC a 48-39 lead with under 12 minutes to go. After Augsburg cut the margin to just two, it was all Chargers for the last 10 minutes. They ran up the score with the likes of Rumbaugh, Nile Austin, and Sareyka all scoring down the stretch to put the game out of reach and close out a 75-59 victory across the Caribbean in San Juan.
 
By the Numbers:
- The Chargers won the battle in points in the paint (44-30), second-chance points (14-6), and fast-break points (21-9)
- Lancaster Bible shot 29-71 (40.8%) from the field and 14-19 (73.7%) on free throws, while the Auggies shot 21-48 (43.8%) overall and 13-27 (48.1%) from the line
- Luke Rumbaugh led all scorers with a career-high 19 points off the bench
- Grant Sareyka added 15 points and a pair of steals
- The Auggies were led by Isaac Rabaey who had 14 points and a game-high eight rebounds
 
Information to Know: This was the men's basketball team's first-ever trip to Puerto Rico and their first matchup against Augsburg. Junior Maureon Tisdale-Couch reached 200 career points in the second half and sophomore Luke Rumbaugh reached 100 career points today after putting up a career-high 19. Senior Grant Sareyka climbed the all-time scoring list today after recording 15 points, moving into 17^th in program history with 1,246 points and passing Israel Loken ('90).
 
Up Next: The Chargers have another game in San Juan, Puerto Rico as they take on Marrietta tomorrow, December 20 at 2:30 p.m. EST.