SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Junior Trevor Seibring scored 26 points, one short of his career high, and junior Alec Bausch collected 12 rebounds to lead the Illinois Wesleyan men's basketball team to an 85-77 win over Southwestern in the Trinity Holiday Tournament in San Antonio, Texas, on Friday, Dec. 18.

The Titans moved off the .500 mark and are 5-4 this season while the Pirates lost for the sixth straight time and slipped to 2-6.

Illinois Wesleyan jumped out to a solid early lead, ahead by 14 at 44-30 with 4:35 before halftime and ahead by a 51-39 margin at half. The Titans sniped in 10 of 20 3-point tries in the first 20 minutes but managed only one of 10 from beyond the arc in the second period.
But the Pirates chipped away and limited the Titans' 3-point barrage and managed to tie the game at 64-64 with 8:42 remaining. An 8-1 run over the next four minutes gave IWU a 72-65 lead with 4:39 left and the Titans held onto the advantage the rest of the way.

Seibring led three other Titans into double figure scoring as senior Bryce Dolan had 15, junior Andy Stempel scored 11 and senior Joel Pennington added 10. "Trevor has been a workhorse for us," praised IWU head coach Ron Rose in a postgame interview with WJBC Radio. "With our injuries, he has had to carry a big load and he was a handful tonight. We did a good job as a team of feeding the post."

Bausch's 12 boards were a game high as the teams were even at 31-31 in the game. Illinois Wesleyan had 16 turnovers to 15 for the Pirates

"Southwestern is a talented offensive team and I think our man defense was the best we've played recently," Rose said. "The game was not a masterpiece but we stayed together, made some mistakes and corrected ourselves and showed a lot of growth tonight."

Ryan Ogden led the Pirates with 19 points, followed by Benjamin Stiver with 13 and Connor Kim with 11.

What's Next?
Illinois Wesleyan takes on No. 25-ranked Texas Lutheran (6-1) on Saturday, Dec. 19, at 5 p.m. in their final game in the San Antonio tournament ... The Bulldogs have won five straight but haven't played since Dec. 5 ... "They're a very good team and we need to keep playing good teams to prepare for the conference season," said Rose. "If we play with purpose on both ends of the floor, we're a good team so it should be a terrific game" ... TLU lost to Pacific Lutheran and has wins over Texas-Tyler, Puget Sound, Hardin- Simmons, LeTourneau, East Texas Baptist and Mary Hardin-Baylor ... Sterling Holmes scores 19.0 ppg and gets 8.9 rpg to lead the Bulldogs in both categories ... Jordan Kouremetis and Zach Behr both score 13.0 ppg ... The Bulldogs outscore foes 83.0-74.4 and outrebound them, 48.6-42.0 ... Jimmy Smith has an 24-11 record in his second season as TLU head coach. The Bulldogs won the 2015 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament and regular-season championships and made the school's first-ever appearance in the NCAA Division III tournament. Smith is 50-38 overall as a head coach (one year at TLU, two years at Schreiner).