Basketball has officially made its return to the campus of John Brown University on Friday, Oct. 28, when both the men’s and women’s basketball teams opened their season inside Bill George Arena in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. For a second straight season, the JBU women opened their season against Ozark Christian College, while the JBU men opened theirs against Barclay College.
The JBU women enter this season coming off of a 16-16 record in the 2021-22 campaign, where they finished just short of making the SAC Tournament Semifinals. With almost all of last season’s roster back, led by two-time Second Team All-SAC honoree Tarrah Stephens, expectations are high. This sentiment has been echoed across the league, as the Golden Eagles were picked to finish fifth in the SAC Preseason Coaches Poll. With conference play less than a month away and their first SAC matchup coming on Nov. 17 against Science & Arts, their opener against Ozark Christian was an important one for the team to start the season off on the right note.
Offensively, neither team’s offense particularly caught fire in the first quarter, but JBU was still able to make the plays needed to take an eight-point lead into the second, with the score 12-4 in JBU’s favor after the first ten minutes of play. The JBU offense proceeded to catch fire, more than doubling their output from the first quarter by putting up 25 in the second, highlighted by a 21-0 run over the opposing Ozark Christian Ambassadors that spanned most of the quarter. This allowed JBU to hold a 37-15 lead at the half.
With similarly productive efforts in the third and fourth quarters offensively, in addition to lockdown defense, held Ozark Christian to just nine points in the second half (and just one point in the fourth quarter), making the rest of the game fairly uncompetitive. The end result was an 86-24 win over Ozark Christian, putting John Brown in the win column for the first time this season. Tarrah Stephens led the way for JBU, putting together a double-double with 25 points and 10 rebounds. Seven of her rebounds came on the offensive glass, as JBU, as a team, had 22 offensive boards, almost as many as the overall total for Ozark Christian that night (25). The JBU defense gave Ozark Christian fits all night long, forcing 31 turnovers and holding the Ambassadors to just 17.8% shooting from the field.
Up next, the JBU men took the court, facing the Barclay Bears in the World-Famous Toilet Paper Game. JBU was picked to finished eighth in the SAC Preseason Coaches Poll, with a lot of questions that seemingly needed to be answered sooner rather than later, when it came to replacing a lot of their top talent from the last few seasons, as the Golden Eagles entered the season needing to re-establish themselves after losing five of their top seven scorers and their top four rebounders from last season. In front of a packed crowd at Bill George Arena, the men’s basketball season tipped off, and 44 seconds in, senior D.J. Ellis drove to the basket and made the first field goal of the season for JBU, which paved the way for the toilet paper to fly once again in the arena. It was another instance of one of the most well-known traditions in small-college athletics, and the first time that it took place in front of a full-capacity crowd since 2019.
After the brief cleanup delay, the Golden Eagles picked up right where they left off, dominating their opponents for the entire half. The most dominant portion of the first twenty minutes of play for JBU consisted of a 23-9 run, which spanned most of the half’s last ten-and-a-half minutes. It took JBU’s lead from 28-13 to an insurmountable 51-22 advantage over Barclay. By the time the teams headed to their respective locker rooms for halftime, JBU nearly had double the points of their opponents, as they held a 60-31 lead. The offense maintained their explosive edge in the second half, too, putting up 65 against Barclay’s 18 the period to cruise to a largely uncontested 125-49 win to open their season.
Their points total on the night marked the most scored by the Golden Eagles since Dec. 4, 1998, when they scored 126 against Southwestern Assemblies of God, and it now stands as the fourth-most points ever scored in a JBU basketball game. Leading the charge on that night was sophomore Latrell Maitland, who scored a career-high 21 points on 8-of-11 shooting, with five of his made baskets coming from three-point range. Payton Guiot was right behind him with 20 points and six made three-points, with DJ Ellis trailing closely behind in third with 19. Also hitting double figures in points on the night was Noah Taylor with 17 points and Boaz Camp with 14.