NEWTON, Mass. – In the final home game of the 2015-16 regular season, Mount Ida College and Albertus Magnus College tangled in an entertaining Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) men's basketball game that saw the Falcons slip past the Mustangs by a 96-91 final.
Each team featured a pair of 20-point scorers, with Jayson Clark (Austin, Texas) and Joey DeFillippi (Bristol, Conn.) netting 20 points apiece and Shontaey Lovell (Bronx, N.Y.) leading the Falcons with 24 points and 16 rebounds, while Marc Wilson (Jersey City, N.J.) added 22 points.
Mount Ida held a one point lead at the break and extended their advantage to seven points four minutes into the second half, but the Falcons took a game tied at 73 and went on a 10-3 run to open up a seven-point advantage in the final three minutes.
Lovell scored 16 of his points in the final twenty minutes and the Falcons hit 19-26 free throws in the second half of a game in which the teams combined to make 50 of 70 free throw attempts, with Mount Ida breaking the program record for free throws made (30-40).
Junior Ethan Dujon (Warwick, R.I.) added 19 points in defeat for the Mustangs, and Errald Jordine (Stamford, Conn.) poured in ten points off of the bench.
Mount Ida faded an early Falcons run that included hot shooting from Chaunce Dunbar (Windsor, Conn.), who scored 15 points in the game and was 4-6 shooting from downtown in the first half.
It took until just fifty seconds remained in the first half that the Mustangs took their first lead, 40-39, on two free throws by Clark, who also dished out a game-high 6 assists.
They opened the second half on a 9-3 run, with Dujon scoring five of those points, to grab a 51-44 advantage.
Back to back layups by Lovell gave the Falcons the lead again and the teams traded one-point advantages before six straight points by Dujon, who scored 15 points in the second half, helped the Mustangs re-tie the game at 73.
Despite six rebounds from Dujon, the Falcons dominated on the boards, 46-33, led by the double-doubles of Lovell and Jaqhawn Walters (Hartford, Conn.), who scored 15 points and grabbed 12 boards to go with three assists, two blocks and a steal. Lovell had four blocks and two dimes.
The Mustangs had 13 steals as a team, with three each from Clark and Dujon leading the way. Freshman Dennis Ross (Portland, Maine) added eight points on 3-4 shooting and 2-3 from the free throw line in 13 productive minutes.
The Mustangs will play their final regular season contest on Saturday at 5:30 pm when they head to Johnson & Wales for a date with the conference leading Wildcats.
Albertus Magnus prepares for the playoffs with a home game against Emmanuel on the same day.