LOS ANGELES — Junior Kris Montoya (Portland, Ore.) is no longer just a stand-up shooter.

The 6-foot-6 forward slashed in the lane, found holes where there were none, putting the Occidental College men's basketball team on his back with a career-high 36 points on 11-18 shooting from the field, to edge Bethesda University 95-91 in Oxy's season opener at Rush Gymnasium on Tuesday.

"I was able to attack the gaps hard, and my teammates helped me get open lanes, making it easier for me to finish.," said Montoya, who was 5 for 10 from three-point range and 9 for 10 from the foul line. 

After Occidental (1-0) squandered a 16 point first half-lead, Oxy head coach Brian Newhall found his team down by two with 9:54 remaining. He shouted to his team "dig deep," and his bench responded.

Oxy turned the game into a high-intensity 12 man full-court press, as two players would sub in and pressure as hard as they could for a few minutes, and then another two would replace them. 

In his 5 minutes of play, reserve Stephen Perkins (Seattle) scored two critical layups to tie the game at 81 with 6:10 remaining.  

"This was a great team win," Newhall said. "Perkins is a gamer. He was clutch. Collectively, we could have rolled over, but we fought back against a very talented Bethesda team by having many players on our bench step up."

Freshman Erik Eichinger's (Radnor, Penn.) on-ball defense in the final minutes of the game gave his team a lift, as his offensive rebound with 3:55 left led to a Montoya layup that put the Tigers up by three. 

Yet Bethesda (1-6) guard Alan Marsh, who scored a team-high 34 points, put his head down and got to the rim on almost every one of his team's possessions, beating Oxy guards off the dribble and then taking advantage of the late Oxy help-side defender to finish inside.

Marsh's three with 1:49 remaining brought the Flames within two points (91-89), but clutch free-throws by Deshun McCoy (Los Angeles) and Montoya allowed Oxy to pull out the win.

At times there were defensive lapses, as Oxy gave up many transition layups to the quick guards of Bethesda, and sent them to the charity stripe once the first line of defense was beat.

But senior leadership gave the Tigers composure down the stretch. McCoy had 20 points and seven rebounds, while Conrad Liebowitz (Santa Monica) energized his team with his strong play inside, scoring 18 points and grabbing a team-high eight boards.

Three other Bethesda players reached double figures: Justin Latham scored 21 points, Ralph Monday added 12 points and notched 10 rebounds, and Vincent Turner had 16 points.

Oxy will face off against Macalester College this Friday at 7 p.m. for the second game of a four-game homestead.

Mirin Fader is the Oxy men's basketball beat writer. She also writes feature stories on Oxy athletes, coaches and alums. She is currently a Team Writer for the Los Angeles Clippers (Clippers.com), and also contributes articles to Dime Magazine (dimemag.com). This past summer, Mirin wrote for the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks. All of her work, including her archived Oxy stories can be found at her website: mirinfader.com