He only needed one more to tie the school record. But his teammate Josh Thompson was down in the corner for . . .
“If they would have closed out on me, I would have kicked it right back,” Thompson said.
That’s the kind of day it was for the Cardinals in a 100-69 victory over Howard. Sharing and burying against Howard’s 2-3 zone.
Thompson racked up plenty of assists himself. Ten of them to be exact, including nine in the first half, to go with zero turnovers. And Mallers eventually tied that school record with eight 3’s on his way to a game- and career-high 24 points.
Ball State (4-2) drained a school-record 21 treys, three more than the previous mark set in a 2016 rout of Eastern Michigan, and the Cardinals registered assists on 30 of their 36 made baskets against the Bison (0-7).
Freshman Luke Bumbalough racked up six of those 3’s for 18 points and had four of the assists. He had the distinction of hitting the record-breaking 3 with just under 5 minutes to play, shortly after fellow rookie Lucas Kroft had tied it.
“I thought our guys really played unselfish,” Ball State head coach James Whitford said. “I thought we really took good shots tonight against their zone. The ball was moving by the pass. It was going inside, outside. There were a lot of times a guy could have shot, and he waited and found a teammate for a better one.”
Mallers hit the first four 3’s he took and finished 8-of-10 from beyond the arc. He exited the blowout victory early, having matched the BSU single-game mark set by Dennis Trammell against Marshall in 2005. Ishmael El-Amin, who scored 15 points, hit three early ones from deep, as well. It was that duo that was hot from the get-go.
Ball State came in with really strange outside shooting numbers through five games. The Cardinals were hitting just 12 percent from beyond the arc in the first half, a number that would rank last in the country if projected over a full game. In the second half, though, their 49 percent mark would have ranked second nationally.
BSU had made only seven first-half 3’s this season coming in. Mallers made that many alone in the first half Saturday, and the Cardinals connected on 13-of-20 as a team. They finished the day 21-for-37 for 57 percent.
“We kind of just took what the defense gave us,” Mallers said. “They were in that kind of soft zone, so we got more open looks.”
When the Cardinals weren’t shooting 3’s, they were breaking down the zone and getting buckets at the rim. Tahjai Teague (11 points) and Brachen Hazen (10) did most of that damage, combining to go 9-for-9 from the floor.
If there was an area Whitford was not as ecstatic about, it was the defensive end. Howard shot 50 percent in the first half, and leading scorer Charles Williams reached his average with 18 points. The Bison were only the second BSU opponent to top 60 points this year.