Lindenwood-Belleville pulled off an impressive result Saturday, defeating Red River Conference team Arkansas 50-27 in Kansas City.

Ben Martin got the Lynx going with two early tries, and then Kyle Hopcraft fielded his own high ball to go in under the posts for a 19-6 lead. 

While Lindenwood-Belleville seemed to have the run of play, they continually got into penalty trouble.

“We gave up a bunch of penalties but I wouldn’t want the players to change how they work in the rucks,” said L-B Head Coach Pat Clifton. “They are going to get some penalties.”

Despite the three tries, L-B was only seven points ahead as Arkansas slotted four penalty kicks to make it 19-12. 

In the second half, Lindenwood-Belleville started to pull away a little bit. Jacob Gilliam, Kritsian Poletti, and Nick Ryba all crossed for tries, and the Lynx eventually cruised to the 50-27 win.

Gilliam had an excellent game, scoring and also setting up his teammates. Ryba played well also.

Arkansas got a very good game from Alex Rees, whose goalkicking kept his team in the game early. But the Lynx were too much.

“We weren’t able to get quick and clean ball as we wanted,” said Clifton. “But it was good enough and we have the backs to make it work. Our lineout has been a question all season, but we seemed to have fixed that - it was better, anyway. This was a really good result for us.”

Clifton said the tone was actually set by the L-B JV team, which played a midweek game and put in their best performance of the year. The varsity group picked up from that, and now Lindenwood-Belleville can set their sights on Notre Dame College November 5, and a possible at-large bid to the national DIAA playoffs.