GAMBIER, Ohio – In the best game played at Tomsich Arena this season, the Hiram Terriers escaped with a 98-94 overtime win against the Kenyon College Lords on Wednesday night in a North Coast Athletic Conference basketball game.
 
The contest featured 19 ties, 18 lead changes and neither team holding a lead bigger than seven points in the 45 minutes of action.
 
Kenyon had its best offensive game of the year as it hit 50.7 percent from the field (36-71) and connected on a 75 percent clip from the foul line.
 
Leading the way for the Lords was Ugnius Zilinskas. He was on fire, hitting 13-of-18 for 31 points, a career-high. Freshman Elijah Davis added 19 while Carter Powell contributed 18 points, nine rebounds and a game-high five assists. Additionally, Matt Shifrin added 15 points off the bench.
 
The Terriers led for pretty much the entirety of the first half before the Lords ended the final 2:26 with an 8-3 run.
 
Before that stretch, Marcel Rice gave the visitors its first four-point lead (8-4) before a free throw from Antonio McQueen at the 11:39 mark pushed the scoreboard to 16-12. Hiram stayed in front for about three more minutes before shots from Powell and Zilinskas tied it at 24 with 7:44 until halftime.
 
Once more, the visitors pushed ahead, but only by five on a two occasions. The last came at 42-37 when Sherman Dean III sank a corner three-ball with 1:41 left. After that, Kenyon ended with two points each from Powell, Zilinskas and Shifrin which moved the Lords ahead 43-42 at the break.
 
In the second half, the two teams would once again trade blows.
 
A Christian Watanabe field goal moved the Lords' lead to 51-47 a little over three minutes in. However, that would be the biggest separation Kenyon could get until a late 7-0 run.
 
With less than 8:30 left, Rice, who scored 28 points for the Terriers, tallied five straight makes to help knot the teams up at 74 apiece. That's when Kenyon made what appeared to be the game-ending run.
 
After the score was tied, Powell drained a left-wing three-pointer, was fouled by Rice, and then converted the free throw. The rare four-point play pushed Kenyon up 78-74. After Hiram turned it over on the next possession, Zilinskas swished through another long ball to move the score to 81-74 with 4:27 left.
 
The biggest lead of the game could not be held, though, as the Terriers scored the next 11 points to take an 84-81 advantage with 30 seconds left. In that span, the Lords turned the ball over three times and missed all three of their shots.
 
Despite the four-point deficit, Kenyon fought back. Davis hit a layup with 23 seconds left and after Christian Crespo turned the ball over on an inbounds pass, Davis converted a layup to tie the game.
 
Each team had a chance to score in the final seconds of regulation, but Jalen Kirksey missed a contested layup and Shifrin's heave at the buzzer came up inches short of swishing through.
 
Then in overtime, the Lords had a pair of two-point leads but a quick 6-2 spurt by Hiram pushed its advantage to 95-93. The visitors never lost the lead after that.
 
Kenyon will travel to Wabash College on Saturday for another conference game starting at 2 p.m.