The Bulldogs showed what they were capa­ble of Saturday, as they upset the No. 19 nationally-ranked Findlay Oilers in thrilling fash­ion 86–77.

Ferris junior for­ward Justin Keenan dis­played why he is one of the best play­ers in the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) as he scored a career-high 35 points. Keenan has won four straight GLIAC North Division “Player of the Week” honors.

Keenan gave the Bulldogs a one-point lead with 34 sec­onds left in the first half and Ferris did not relin­quish that lead the rest of the game. Ferris looked to be in con­trol as they opened up a 10-point lead with 13:58 to go, but Findlay surged and trimmed the Bulldogs lead down to one. Head coach Bill Sall was pleased with the effort the Bulldogs gave against a tough opponent.

“I am really proud of how every­body played,” said Sall. “Everybody played with good emo­tion and passion.”

For the Bulldogs, senior guard/forward Austin Randel, junior guard Matt DeHart and junior guard Darien Gay scored in the dou­ble dig­its as they recorded 16, 12 and 10 points respectively.

The win snapped a five-game los­ing streak against the Oilers, includ­ing a 90–62 shel­lack­ing ear­lier this sea­son in Findlay, Ohio. The vic­tory was only Ferris’ sec­ond win against the Oilers in the past 45 years. Findlay won the NCAA Division II National Championship last sea­son with a per­fect 36–0 record.

“Hopefully we can feed off this and if we keep play­ing like this, we will be play­ing for quite a while,” said Sall.

It was a much dif­fer­ent team that played against Findlay than the one that showed up on Thursday night to take on Hillsdale. Ferris came fly­ing out of the gate and opened up a 15-point first half lead, only to fall apart in the sec­ond half as Hillsdale stormed back to win 96–85.

“We def­i­nitely let one get away,” said Randel. “We just fell apart in the sec­ond half.”

The defen­sive melt­down started near the end of the first half as Hillsdale cut its deficit down to eight at the break. The Chargers shot 63 per­cent from the field for the game.

“We played hor­ri­ble defense,” said Sall. “We got lethar­gic as the game went along.”

Keenan scored 20 points and Randel notched 19 points in the los­ing effort.

The Bulldogs have won seven of their last eight games and their record now stands at 13–8 over­all and 11–5 in the con­fer­ence. The Bulldogs will travel to the upper penin­sula to take on Michigan Tech on Feb. 11 and then bat­tle Northern Michigan on Feb. 13 as they start a four-game road trip.