The Kenyon men’s basketball team suffered a close loss to DePauw University on Saturday. Hoping for their first conference win of the 2024-2025 season, the Owls fought hard, but the Tigers ultimately won 82-79 in overtime. 

Kenyon had a strong first-half performance, finishing the opening 20 minutes with a 45-34 lead over DePauw. Despite the Tigers gaining a 10-point advantage just under 10 minutes into the game, the Owls came back fighting. A deep 3-pointer from Connor Moss ’25 started the rally for Kenyon, as the visitors slowly closed the gap and took the lead. The Owls closed the first half on an 11-2 run, setting themselves up for success going into the second half. 

However, Kenyon struggled to maintain its lead for the rest of regulation. After the first couple minutes of play in the second half, where the Owls maintained their double-digit differential, their lead slowly started to dwindle. 

With just over four minutes to play in the second, the two teams were tied at 65 points apiece. A layup from Gefen Bar-Cohen ’25 in the paint broke the stalemate and put the Owls up by two. Next, the Tigers made a 3-pointer, but Moss answered with a 3-pointer of his own to keep Kenyon ahead. After a foul by Moss, DePauw stepped up to the line, making one free throw and missing the other. Two seconds later, after a fastbreak, Charlie Heywood ’27 was fouled, sending him to the line where he sank both of his free throws. With just six seconds left to play, Nick Nelson ’26 fouled a DePauw player, who made the first of two free throws to shrink the Kenyon lead to two. In a last-ditch effort to even the score on the second free throw, the DePauw player missed, but the Tigers snatched the offensive rebound and made a layup with two seconds left, tying the game 72-72 and sending the match to overtime. 

In overtime, the Owls fought hard but came up short after a tough battle. The two teams remained even throughout the extra time, but DePauw was able to pull away toward the end. After the Tigers sank a 3-pointer with just over a minute left in overtime, Kenyon struggled to take advantage of a fouling situation. Instead, the Tigers maintained their lead, securing the win on a fastbreak 3-pointer with seven seconds left on the clock. As the buzzer sounded at the end of overtime, the final score sat at 82-79 in favor of DePauw.  

Despite the loss, the Owls put up incredible stats. Bar-Cohen tied his career-high with  29 points, followed by Moss with 18, the highest scorers of the night. The two combined made up 47 of the Owl’s 79 points. Kenyon finished the evening with a 42.1% shooting percentage from the field and sank 33.3% of its 3-pointers. Their best stats of the night go to their free throw ratio, sitting at 22-26, a strong 84.6%. The Owls also had an impressive 15 steals to DePauw’s five, including four from Nelson. 

The loss drops Kenyon’s record to 1-8 this season, and 0-2 in the NCAC. Over winter break, the Owls will travel to New York to compete in the NYU Holiday Tournament with their first game coming against Williams College (Mass.) on Dec. 29. Despite the loss, Heywood is optimistic about the team’s future. “We can take from this game that we can compete with any team in the conference,” he wrote in an email to the Collegian. “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to compete against two great teams when we go to New York.”

Sports editor Henry Brandt ’26 is a member of the men’s basketball team.