CLAREMONT, Calif. (Feb. 6, 2010) – In a battle between
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference rivals, the
Occidental College Tigers and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags fought
it out on the hardwood. While the Black and Orange controlled the
game for most of the first half, the Maroon and Gold stole the lead
in the second to earn a 60-51 win over the Tigers to remain atop
the standings alone while Oxy falls into a third-place tie.
Occidental's Jake Copithorne won the
tip-off and Huston Conti quickly put the Tigers on
the board with a three-pointer. After the teams exchanged baskets,
Oxy regained the lead when Peter Gierlach hit a
long ball, followed by a Deshun McCoy layup in the
paint. Three minutes later Jack Hanley hit one of
his two three-pointers of the game to push the Oxy lead to eight,
the largest it had in the game. With five seconds to play in the
opening stanza Conti knocked down another three to give the
visiting Tigers a 31-25 lead at the intermission.
After the break, CMS came out with all cylinders firing and
turned that six point deficit into a one point lead when Chris
Blees scored three of his game points. They went on to open up a
12-point lead with 7:15 to play.
The tenacious Tigers clawed back into the game when Sean
Anderson sparked a 7-0 run to get Oxy back within five.
Conti put in a basket with 2:33 to go, but back-to-back
Stags' buckets put the hosts up by eight with 34 seconds to
play. Hanley again put two points on the board and a quick foul put
Jason Toney on the line. He sank both free-throws to make it an
eight point game again and in the final seconds the Tigers were
unable to connect sending the visitors home with their third SCIAC
loss of the season.
Hanley led all Tigers with 15 points while Conti came up with
10. Anderson scored nine, and was 3-for-3 from the field, but
played limited minutes.
Overall Occidental grabbed just 28 rebounds, McCoy had a
team-high seven, and accounted for three of the seven offensive
rebounds. CMS pulled down 31 total boards.
Each team turned the ball over 14 times, resulting in 16 Oxy
points and 14 CMS points. One of the biggest differences in the
game was CMS's ability to get inside. They scored 34 points
in the paint to Oxy's 12.
Occidental (14-6, 6-3 SCIAC) will return to Rush Gymnasium on
Wednesday, Feb. 10 to host Cal Lutheran University (10-10, 4-5) at
7:30 p.m. in SCIAC action.
Article by: Tracy Maple, Sports Information Director
