MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Saint Anselm College men's basketball team led by as many as nine points in Sunday's affair with the Skyhawks, but nationally-ranked Stonehill College closed the gap in the second half to take a narrow 71-70 victory over the Hawks.
Saint Anselm evens its overall record at 3-3 while falling to 1-3 in Northeast-10 Conference play. The Skyhawks, who are ranked No. 24 in the D2SIDA National Media Poll while also receiving votes in the NABC National Coaches' Poll, move to 7-2 and 3-0 versus the league.
Senior Miles Tention (Palo Alto, Calif.) scored a career-high 30 points in the loss, making five treys and finding the bottom of the net on 12 of his 17 field goals on the afternoon. Senior Gustav Suhr-Jessen (Virum, Denmark) scored 14 points with a team-best eight rebounds and classmate Chris Paul (Highland Mills, N.Y.) scored 10 points with six rebounds and seven assists, matching a career-high in helpers.
Stonehill overcame a halftime deficit of 35-26 to shoot 66.7% from the floor (18-for-27) in the final 20 minutes while scoring the first eight points of the second half. The Skyhawks added a scoring run of 8-3 to take the lead with 15:34 to go in the game and later put the game out of reach with a 16-7 spurt near the midpoint of the half.
Saint Anselm trailed by a 66-64 margin with 2:50 to go, thanks to a layup by Suhr-Jessen that trimmed the deficit to two points. The Skyhawks would pull away, getting just enough offense down the stretch to maintain a one-point lead as time expired – the Hawks had two costly turnovers in the game's final two-plus minutes.
Stonehill led by a game-high seven points with 12:53 to go in the first half, shooting five-for-eight to open the game while the home team connected on just two of its first eight shots. Saint Anselm immediately responded shortly thereafter with an 11-0 spurt, turning the tables and compiling an 18-14 advantage with 6:46 left in the opener.
Back-to-back triples by Tention in the final minutes of the first half upped the Hawks lead to 35-26 at halftime. Saint Anselm closed the first 20 minutes of play on a 9-3 scoring run, taking the nine-point lead into the locker room – Stonehill hit on just nine field goals to that point, shooting 35.6% from the floor while committing eight of the first half's 14 turnovers.
Stonehill brought the game even by scoring 14 of the game's next 21 points with just minutes elapsed in the second half, shooting six-for-seven from the floor and canning two shots from beyond the arc. The Hawks kept pace by going three-for-five in the same time frame, but five point scorers for Stonehill stunned the Hawks during that period.
Isaiah Burnett scored 22 points for Stonehill and Jackson Benigni had 15 points and six rebounds off the bench.
Saint Anselm hosts Bloomfield this Saturday, Dec. 11 at 1 p.m. in Stoutenburgh Gymnasium.
