Evansville Elevates Performance by Staying Very Close Together

Evansville’s Purple Aces, who battled through an injury-plagued season, found a different sort of togetherness during the Midwestern Collegiate Conference tournament.

Evansville players were stuck in an elevator at their hotel three hours before their game against No. 22 Xavier in Saturday night’s championship game.

“I guess if we could stick together in an elevator for an hour, we could stick together in the game,” guard Scott Shreffler said after the Purple Aces won their second consecutive MCC tournament title--and the league’s automatic berth in the NCAA tournament--with an 80-69 victory.

“It was pretty funny for 15 minutes,” said Shreffler, who added that the biggest problem was finding head room for 7-foot-1 center Sascha Hupmann.

“We got Sascha to sit down, and I got the game plan out and went over it with the team.”

The 13 players were en route to their pregame meal at their downtown hotel when their express elevator became stuck. After about an hour, a technician was able to override the controls manually, freeing the team.

Parrish Casebier came off the bench and scored 26 points for Evansville (23-6), which had lost both regular-season games and eight of its last 10 to Xavier (23-5).