The Missouri State Bears and Central Michigan Chippewas hooked up in a battle royal Saturday night and the Bears made the most of their numerous trips to the foul line and came away with a 90-76 non-conference victory in an O’Reilly ESPNU BracketBusters game in Hammons Student Center.
 The victory, coming in the next-to-last game in the 32-year history of Hammons, pushed the Bears to 14-15 on the season with a chance to get back to the .500 mark when they entertain the 2008 Missouri Valley Conference regular season champion No. 16 Drake Bulldogs Tuesday night in the Hammons finale. Tipoff will be 7:05 p.m. The Bears are 13-2 at home for the season.
 A highlight of the evening was the halftime ceremony in which Missouri State retired the jersey No. 32 of Daryel Garrison, the school’s all-time career scoring leader. Garrison had 1,975 points in his 1971-75 Bears’ career, played exclusively before the three-point field goal. Garrison was a 6-foot-3 guard-forward.
 Central Michigan was whistled for 31 personal fouls in the game--one of them intentional--to go with three technical fouls and the Bears shot a season-high 43 free throws on the night, making 33 of them.
 The final score was the biggest margin of the night as the Bears led virtually throughout but couldn’t ever pull away until a long stretch of free throws at the end produced the final 14-point win. Central Michigan dropped to 11-15 overall.
 Dale Lamberth hit 9-of-12 free throws and finished with a game-high 25 points while senior forward running mate Deven Mitchell was perfect in 11 free throw attempts and netted 23 points. Justin Fuehrmeyer hit all six of his charity tosses and all three of his three-point tries and added 17 points.
 The Bears had a 30-22 rebound margin in the contest but Central Michigan rained down 11 three-pointers as they battled to stay in the game until the closing minutes. Giordan Watson led a parade of four Chippewas in double figures in scoring as he collected 17 for CMU.
 Missouri State shot well in the contest from the field, hitting .591 (26/44) when they weren’t put onto the foul line. Central Michigan almost kept pace, hitting .500 (29/58), but only got to the line for 10 free throw tries in the game.
