Dec. 29, 2010

Box Score

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. - The Marist men's basketball team posted a 66-57 victory over Penn of the Ivy League on Wednesday night at the McCann Center. The Red Foxes were led by junior guard R. J. Hall (East Orange, N.J.) who scored a game-high 19 points and shot 10-for-10 from the free throw line.

Hall also dished out six assists and grabbed four rebounds in the game. He was joined in double figures by sophomore guard Sam Prescott (Philadelphia, Pa.) who chipped in 11 points on 4-for-8 shooting from the field. He also grabbed two rebounds and made three out of four free throws.

After trailing 27-25 at halftime, the Red Foxes used a 6-0 run in the first 1:13 of the second half to take the lead for good. A three-point play by freshman forward Adam Kemp (Sherrill, N.Y.) and a three-pointers by classmate Jay Bowie (Tampa, Fla.) gave Marist a 31-27 lead.

Penn (5-5) opened the contest on an 11-3 run. After Conor Turley hit a layup for the first basket of the game, freshman Pieter Prinsloo (Johannesburg, South Africa) responded with a three-point field goal on the ensuing possession to give the Red Foxes a 3-2 edge, Marist's lone lead of the half.

The Quakers stretched the lead to 10 at 16-6 on a dunk by Jack Eggleston. Over the next 3:31, Marist (3-10) used a 10-0 run to tie the score at 16 apiece. The 10 points were scored by Prescott and red-shirt freshman Anell Alexis (Hillsborough, N.J.). Both Prescott and Alexis completed three-point plays. Prescott hit an additional pair of free throws and Alexis nailed a jumper to cap the run with 8:01 to play in the frame.

Marist tied the score twice in the final four minutes of the half. Hall used a layup to tie the score at 21 with 3:38 to play and a pair of Hall free throws equaled the score at 23-23 with 2:01 to go.

Mike Howlett pushed the Penn lead to 27-25 after he split a pair of foul shots with 1:01 to go. The Quakers took the two-point advantage into the intermission.

A 9-0 run over 2:25 pushed the Marist lead to 11. During the run, the Red Foxes got buckets from senior Korey Bauer (Whitehall, Pa.), Prescott and a three-pointer from Hall to cap the stretch with12:30 remaining.

In the final 3:01 of the game Marist hit 11 out of 12 free throws to secure the win and shot 24-for-27 from the free throw line in the game, a mark of 88.9 percent.

Penn was led by Tyler Bernardini, who netted 18. The Red Foxes were able to hold Zack Rosen, the reigning Ivy League and Big Five Player of the Week, to 15 points on 6-for-16 shooting. Jack Eggleston grabbed a game-high 13 rebounds for the Quakers, including 10 in the opening stanza.

The Red Foxes won the battle of the boards by eight rebounds, 40-32 and the Marist reserves outscored its counterparts from Penn 26-5. In the second half, the Red Foxes shot 52 percent (13-for-25) from the field.

Marist begins a two-game road trip at Loyola (Md.) for a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) contest on Monday, Jan. 3. Tip-off at Reitz Arena is slated for 7 p.m. The Red Foxes are 2-0 in MAAC play, having defeated both Niagara and Canisius at home earlier this month.

Notes: Hall's 10 makes from the free-throw line was a career-high. He has now hit 25 consecutive free throws. ... Since moving into the starting lineup, Hall is averaging a team-best 14.1 points per game. ... The victory snapped a four-game losing streak for the Red Foxes. ... This was the first meeting between Marist and Penn. The Red Foxes are now 11-7 all-time against Ivy League schools.