Courtesy of GoGriffs.com
A furious late rally by the Canisius men’s basketball team came up short in the end, as the Golden Griffins fell to Mount St. Mary’s 64-60 in MAAC men’s basketball action Monday afternoon at the Gallagher Center in Lewiston, N.Y. The Mountaineers moved to 6-9 overall and 2-2 in MAAC play with the victory, while Canisius fell to 2-11 overall and 0-4 in league action with its ninth-straight loss.
The Griffs trailed 54-36 with 10:05 left to play, but the Blue and Gold battled back to get within one point at 59-58 with 49 seconds left thanks to a 22-5 run over the span of 9:02. In that run, sophomore TJ Gadsden scored seven points, highlighted by a jumper with 49 seconds remaining that made the score 59-58. However, that would be as close as the Griffs would get down the stretch, as Mount St. Mary’s junior Xavier Lipscomb hit a 3-pointer with 21 seconds remaining to push Mount’s lead back to four at 62-58. Canisius senior Jacco Fritz grabbed an offensive rebound and scored a bucket with 0:07 left to trim Mount St. Mary’s cushion back to two at 62-60, but a pair of late free-throws by Mount’s Jalen Benjamin with 3.2 seconds remaining sealed the victory for the Mountaineers.
Canisius graduate student Jamir Moultrie led the Griffs with a team-high 11 points, while Gadsden came off the bench to score nine points to go with a career-high 10 rebounds in the loss. Jordan Henderson and Fritz each had nine points each for Canisius, while senior George Maslennikov scored six points and grabbed a career-high eight boards. For the game, Canisius shot 38.1 percent from the field, 25 percent (6-for-24) from 3-point land and 85.7 percent (6-for-7) from the free-throw line in the loss.
Benjamin scored a game-high 19 points and dished out six assists in the win for Mount St. Mary’s, which snapped a three-game losing skid with the victory. George Tinsley added 16 points and five rebounds, while Dakota Leffew posted 13 points for the Mountaineers, who shot 44.4 percent from the floor, 40.9 percent from 3-point land 87.5 percent from the free-throw line.
Canisius out-rebounded Mount St. Mary’s by a 36-27 count with 13 of those rebounds coming off the offensive glass, which the Blue and Gold converted into 12 points. The Griffs also forced Mount into 15 turnovers, which they turned into 20 points.
In the first half, Moultrie hit a jumper with 4:15 left to play before halftime to get the Blue and Gold within three at 29-26. From there, Mount St. Mary’s went on a 19-4 in a 9:01 stretch spanning two halves to take a 48-30 lead with 15:06 left in the game. Mount St. Mary’s kept its lead around 16 points for the game’s next 5:00 before Canisius started its comeback push.
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