Box Score St. Louis, Mo. - DePauw battled back from as much as an 11-point deficit, but Johns Hopkins outscored the Tigers 14-4 over the final four minutes to take an 82-74 win in the opening game of Washington University's Lopata Classic. Both teams moved to 1-1 on the season.
DePauw faces Pomona-Pitzer in tomorrow night's third-place game a 6 p.m. CST. The Sagehens lost to the host Bears, 87-65, in the evening's second game.
The Blue Jays scored the game's first seven points and held an 11-2 lead just 5:02 into the game. After DePauw trimmed the margin to four on a couple of occasions, Johns Hopkins took its biggest lead of the game at 37-26 with 3:45 left in the first half.
David Vogel hit a three, while Mason Hankins and Clint Cunningham added buckets to finish a 7-0 run and close the gap to 37-33. The Blue Jays held a 44-37 lead at the intermission.
Johns Hopkins pushed the lead back to 10 early in the second half and it still held a 58-49 advantage after Ryan Curran's jumper with 14:46 left.
Cris Burrough started a 10-0 DePauw run with a three-pointer before Luke Lattner hit a free throw and later nailed a three-pointer. Nate John knocked in a three with 11:56 remaining to give the Tigers their first lead of the game at 59-58.
The teams battled through eight more lead changes with DePauw holding a 70-68 lead with 4:57 left after Jack VandeMerkt hitting a pair of free throws. The Blue Jays scored 10 straight to take a 78-70 lead with just 1:34 remaining as they hit five consecutive field goals, while the Tigers missed four shots and committed three turnovers.
Cunningham converted a pair of putbacks to close the gap to five, but that's as close as DePauw got as Johns Hopkins hit 4-of-6 free throws in the final 29 seconds.
Vogel paced DePauw with 19 points, while hitting 5-of-9 three-pointers. Lattner followed with 15 points with Cunningham adding 13 and VandeMerkt 10. VandeMerkt led the way with seven rebounds.
Curran led the Blue Jays with 25 points and eight rebounds followed by Gene Williams with 15 and Austin Vasiliadis and Niko Kotoulas with 11 each.
The Bluejays shot 51.7 percent from the floor to DePauw's 42.3 and held a 33-32 rebounding edge. The Tigers committed 20 turnovers to Johns Hopkins' 13 leading to a 19-7 advantage in points off of turnovers for the Blue Jays.