Men's Basketball Drops 80-77 Decision to Wagner |
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Sophomore Donovin McLendon (Miami, Fla.) led the Blackbirds in scoring with 15 points. He hit a pair of free throws with 5:28 left to give LIU its last lead of the game at 63-62. Matt Vitale’s three-pointer and a layup from Jamal Smith gave Wagner a 67-63 lead with under three minutes left, which the Seahawks did not surrender. The Blackbirds answered with a three-pointer from senior Esa Maki-Tulokas (Forssa, Finland) to cut the deficit to one at 67-66. After the Seahawks hit two foul shots, freshman Aurimas Adomatis (Kaunas, Lithuania) hit a pair of his own, but Wagner’s Joey Mundweiler iced the game with a clutch three-pointer to make it 72-68 with 1:14 to go. The Seahawks hit 10-of-12 foul shots down the stretch to hold off the Blackbirds. McLendon tied a career-high with 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting. Adomaitis added 13, while senior Aubin Scott (Hempstead, N.Y.) and junior Eugene Kotorobai (Richmond Hill, Ontario) each had 12 points. Freshman Jaytornah Wisseh (Brooklyn, N.Y.) had 11 points to go with seven rebounds and seven assists. Long Island (7-14, 3-7 NEC), which has lost five straight, looked strong early on taking a 29-23 lead on a layup from McLendon with 2:59 to go in the opening half. After a bucket from Wagner cut the lead to four, Maki-Tulokas hit a three-pointer to give LIU its largest lead of the game at 32-25. The Seahawks responded by outscoring the Blackbirds, 7-1 down the stretch and went into halftime down 33-32 after a trifecta from Vitale. The Blackbirds built the lead to as much as five points in the second half, but the Seahawks did not fold and eventually took the lead for good late in the period. Vitale led Wagner (8-13, 5-5) with 19 points, hitting six three-pointers. James Ulrich and Mark Porter each added 14 points. Although LIU shot 44.4 percent, compared to 41.7 percent for Wagner, the Blackbirds were done in on the glass where the Seahawks held a 49-31 advantage. Wagner converted those rebounds into 20 second-chance points. LIU also shot just 15-for-22 from the foul line, compared to 21-of-32 for Wagner. The Blackbirds travel to Fairfield, Conn., to face Sacred Heart
on Friday, February 5, for a 7:30 p.m. game.
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1/30/07 --
The Long Island University men’s
basketball team dropped an 80-77 decision to Wagner on Tuesday
night at the Wellness, Recreation and Athletics Center.
Both teams had five players in double-figures in a back-and-forth affair, during
which neither team led by more than seven points.