Men's Basketball Edged by Mount Saint Vincent
Riverdale, N.Y. – The NYU-Poly Men’s Basketball team dropped a hard fought 64-60 Skyline Conference game to the College of Mounr Saint Vincent Saturday afternoon at the Sharp Center. A pair of Mount Saint Vincent freshmen combined for 32 points and the Dolphin bench outscored NYU-Poly 27-8 leading to the Jays' 7th straight loss.
The game was tightly contested throughout on Saturday with the largest lead for either team being nine after Caputo nailed a triple with just over five minutes to play in regulation. NYU-Poly’s largest lead of the afternoon came in the first nine minutes of the game when it led by seven points on two occasions.
The Blue Jays came out flying in the first half, opening the game with a 12-5 run to pull in front by seven. They would hold the lead until the 6:07 mark when Filipp Bochkov drained a three pointer to move the Dolphins in front 22-21. NYU-Poly would grab the lead back on an Anthony Matolla (Brooklyn, NY) bucket a half minute later before the Mount took back the lead for the remainder of the half on another Caputo triple with 4:41 left before the intermission.
The Dolphins would stretch their lead to six points before the Blue Jays rallied for six straight of their own over a 1:19 stretch, with all six points coming from Jason Buckner (Littleton, CO). Miller would break the run with a lay in during the final 35 seconds to send the Dolphins to the break with a 33-31 lead.
Matolla scored 15 of his game-high 22 points in the first half on 4-7 shooting from the floor and 6-6 shooting from the free-throw line. Buckner chipped in eight points as the two combined for seven of NYU-Poly's 10, first-half field goals.
The Dolphins tried to run away in the second half and held the lead from the 17:28 mark of the second half until Buckner drained a basket to push NYU-Poly in front 44-43 with 11:06 left in regulation time.
After freshmen Darian Crosby's (Denver, CO) bucket moved the Jays in front by three, Dolphins sophomore Eric Van Tine canned a trey to tie the score and ignited a 10-4 spurt that pushed the Mount in front by a nine point margin.
NYU-Poly would fight back to get to within two points on a pair of occasions, but Miller and Van Tine combined to go 3-4 from the free-throw line in the final 50 seconds to secure the win.
Overall the Blue Jays shot just 33.3-percent shooting and 20-percent shooting from behind the arc. Matolla led the attack with 22 points and Buckner finished with 17. The duo combined to go 12-32 from the floor and 14-15 from the charity stripe. Freshmen Myles Hinchcliffe (Flower Mound, TX) added eight points and four assists.
The Dolphins shot just over 47-percent in the tilt, including a 10-15 performance from Miller on his way to 21 points to go along with eight rebounds. Caputo finished 4-7 from the floor and 3-4 from three point range for his 11 points.
Overall in the contest, Mount Saint Vincent held the edge on the glass 38-34 and the Dolphin bench outscored NYU-Poly by a significant 27-8 margin.
The Jays fall to 2-8 overall and 0-5 in the Skyline Conference, while Mount Saint Vincent improves to 6-4 and evens its Skyline Conference mark at 3-3. The Jays will be back in action again on Tuesday night when they host Sage Colleges. Tip-off with the Gators is set for 8:00 p.m.
