SILOAM SPRINGS, Arkansas (Oct. 24, 2026) — In a wild explosion of white, thousands of John Brown University fans launched the traditional toilet paper storm after senior forward Marko Malekinusic, transfer from Florida Tech, grabbed the rebound and netted the Golden Eagles' first bucket of the season with 19:01 remaining in the first half, marking the raucous start of the school's 43rd annual Toilet Paper Game.

What began as a spontaneous celebration in 1984 has evolved into a nationally recognized spectacle, with USA Today, ESPN, CBS Sports and Bleacher Report all hailing it as one of college basketball's premier fan traditions. The first basket of the season's home opener triggers thousands of fans to shower the court with toilet paper, drawing an automatic — and worth it — technical foul.

"What a special environment here. This is awesome. If you can’t get up for a game like this, you probably should not be playing," said Head Coach Jason Beschta. "It was great to have so many people show out like they do every year to make this such a special thing for not just our team, but this is a big campus thing, this is a community thing. I love the way we are able to come around and embrace that and make it really special year after year." 

As the Golden Eagles went a little different direction personnel wise this year and graduated a couple of centers, this brought a new style of play to the basketball court this season with less bigs and more speed.

"With the opportunity to go more forwards and guards instead of any kind of centers in there allowed us to think about what changes we might make, so we just thought this is a fun style to play. It’s saying let’s get up and down," Beschta said."We’re not trying to be like a team that’s shooting it in five seconds or something like that. We’re trying to play smart, good basketball together but just want to attack." 

Beschta said tonight's TP Game gave a lot of players the opportunity to play in Bill George Arena for the first time and freshmen the chance to participate in their first collegiate game ever. He was pleased with how they all came together for the first time in game play.

"Love the chance to get a lot of guys some time on the floor and get some of those jitters out. We’ve got so many new guys. Some guys, it’s their first game here or first college game," he said. "Everybody by this time of the year is tired of playing against yourselves. You just need to have that outlet of playing against somebody else, and I think we did that really well playing extremely hard. We were very unselfish in the way that we played. I thought we just kept the pressure, kept the intensity, kept the energy going the whole way through."

Kimberly-Clark continued its partnership with the Golden Eagles for the ninth year, donating 4,000 rolls of toilet paper. Fans exchanged canned food items for half the rolls, with all donations and remaining toilet paper benefiting the Manna Center, a local food bank in Siloam Springs.

The Ecclesia College Royals returned to Bill George Arena for their fourth appearance in the crowd-favorite matchup. The first three matchups were in 2017, 2018 and 2025.

The Golden Eagles defeated the Royals with a final score of 107-58.

John Brown University is a leading private Christian university, training students to honor God and serve others since 1919. Arkansas’ top-ranked regional university (U.S. News) and Arkansas’ No. 3 university (The Wall Street Journal), JBU enrolls more than 2,600 students from 35 states and 58 countries in its traditional undergraduate, graduate, online and concurrent education programs. JBU offers over 50 undergraduate majors, with top programs including business, nursing, family and human services, engineering, teacher education, psychology, computer science, construction management, biology, Bible and visual arts. Seven graduate degrees are available in business, counseling, outdoor program management and cybersecurity.

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