The Mount Ida College men's basketball team dropped their second consecutive Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) loss to Saint Joseph's College (ME) 70-58 this past Saturday afternoon in Standish, Maine. The Mustangs fall to 9-10 overall, 3-9 in the GNAC while the Monks improve to 15-6 and 9-5 in conference competition.
To start things off, a Ray Eatmon (Huntington, NY) jumper capped a game-opening 7-2 run by the Monks, which spanned the first 2:17 of the contest. Another Monks basket over two minutes later propelled St. Joseph's to a 13-5 lead with 15:04 left in the first half.
The shooters went cold over the next five minutes of play, as the teams combined to score just six points with six misses and six turnovers. Leading 18-11 at the 9:47 mark, the Monks swiped three steals from the Mustangs, with Elbie Murphy (Loudonville, NY) collecting two of them, as St. Joseph's scored three easy buckets to take a 24-11 lead with 8:40 before the break.
Mount Ida managed to shut out the hosts, 12-0, with a Joseph Cabral (Walpole, MA/Walpole) hoop capping the run and cutting the Monks lead to 26-23 3:36 later. The Mustangs gained their only lead of the game when Matt Bennett (Rochester, NH/Spaulding) connected on a jumper at the 2:57 mark to give his team a slim 29-28 edge. St. Joseph's forward Chris Davis (New York, NY) countered just six seconds later with a lay-in to put the Monks back in the lead. Mount Ida managed to keep the contest within striking distance for the rest of the first stanza and trailed 35-31 at the break.
A lay-up from Zach O'Brien (Schenectady, NY) 5:44 into the second half put the Monks up by nine, 46-37, but the Mustangs mounted a 9-2 run, capped by a Darren Martinez (Mattapan, MA/Brookline) bucket at the 11:24 mark, to cut the St. Joseph's lead to 48-46. Murphy went on to score the next six points for the hosts eventually leading 56-51.
Baskets from Alberto Rue (Jamaica Plain, MA) and Vachon extended the Monk lead to 60-52 two minutes later. Saint Joseph's managed to control the ball for nearly two and a half minutes as the hosts, accounting for six straight missed shots, pressured Mount Ida on the glass to collect six offensive caroms. The series, capped by a Vachon drive and a three-point play put the Monks up 63-52, seemed to swing the momentum of the game with 4:09 remaining.
Saint Joseph's maintained the double-digit lead for the rest of the second half and a free throw with seven seconds remaining closed out the game scoring with the Monks earning a 70-58 GNAC victory.
For Mount Ida, Bennett had 10 points with six boards, Gino Dipietro (Westbrook, ME/Westbrook) scored seven points and Otis Thompson (Gardner, MA/Gardner) netted six points and eight caroms. Martinez led the Mustangs with 15 points as well.