Conway – The Central Arkansas men's basketball program played their first game under new head coach Russ Pennell at home on Saturday afternoon, hosting crosstown opponent Hendrix at the Farris Center. The Bears cruised in the exhibition, taking down the Warriors 102-60.

Taking the court for the first time under new head coach Pennell, the Bears shot 50.0 percent on the night, while dishing out 21 assists and committing just nine turnovers. Central Arkansas held Hendrix to a shooting percentage of just 39.2 percent on the night, while forcing 21 turnovers and tallying 16 steals.

Freshman guard Jordan Howard paced the Bears with 22 points on 6 of 17 shooting, including 3 of 6 from beyond the arc. Fellow freshman Boo Milligan chipped in with 16 points on 6 of 10 shooting as the Bears saw five players score in double figures.

Mathieu Kamba (6 of 9 from the floor), Albert Christensson (5 of 8), and Jake Zuilhof (5 of 7) all tallied 12 points for Central Arkansas.

"Our offense is predicated on sharing the ball, there's a lot of passing," said Pennell, who played for Central Arkansas from 1982-84. "My teams have always been very balanced, scoring-wise, so having five guys in double figures is hopefully a common occurrence. We're not going to be a team that has one guy that average 20 points per game, but the good thing is that we have several guys that can score 20 points in a given game, so on that side of the ball I was really happy with the way we shared the ball."

The Bears shot 46.2 percent on 18 of 39 shooting in the first half, though they went just 1 of 7 from deep as the went to the locker room with a 51-29 lead. Central Arkansas returned from the break to shoot 54.1 percent in the second half, bolstered by a 4 of 6 mark from the three-point line.

On the defensive side of the ball, the Bears were led by Mike Martin who picked up seven steals and Zuilhof and Kamba, who each had a pair of blocks. "Defensively, I thought that at times we were pretty good, and at other times we were kind of flat and let Hendrix move the ball a little bit too easily," said Pennell. "We'll continue to work on that, but any time you can keep an opponent under 40 percent shooting we're pretty pleased with that. We're an aggressive style defense, we get into the passing lanes and we like to disrupt our opponent's timing by contesting every pass. I thought that there were moments where our defense looked exactly like it should, where it's hard to pass the basketball and get it into score zones, and we just have to keep working to make that a consistent effort every night."

The Bears scored 29 points off of Hendrix turnovers on the night, and dominated the glass, out-rebounding the Warriors 49-27 on their way to 31 second chance points. Ten of the 11 Central Arkansas players that saw time scored on the night.

The Bears have one more exhibition before the regular season begins, hosting the University of the Ozarks next Saturday at 7:30 PM.