COLCHESTER, Vt. – The Saint Anselm College men's basketball team secured a 69-56 victory over Saint Michael's College on Saturday.
Saint Anselm has now won six games in a row, improving to 9-3 on the season and to 6-1 against Northeast-10 Conference opponents. The Hawks are receiving votes in the most recent National Association of Basketball Coaches national poll.
Senior Tyler Arbuckle (Bristol, Conn.) scored a game-high 25 points for Saint Anselm, pouring home 14 of his team's 33 first-half points on the way to the victory. Sophomore Zac Taylor (Victoria, Australia) followed with 21 points of his own, narrowly missing the double-double with a career-best nine rebounds.
Senior Owen McGlashan (Marlton, N.J.) scored eight points with as many rebounds, adding two assists. As a team, Saint Anselm handed out 22 of the game's 29 assists, led by seven from senior Miles Tention (Palo Alto, Calif.) and five from junior Matt Becker (Fairfield, Conn.).
The Hawks have posted at least 21 assists in back-to-back games and have posted double-digit assist totals in all but three games this season. Saint Anselm also equaled a season-high with nine steals, paced by a career-high total of four takeaways from Becker.
An early 15-0 run gave the Hawks a commanding 17-5 lead in the game's first nine-plus minutes. In that stretch, Arbuckle poured home six of those points. Saint Anselm had only six made field goals on 15 attempts, but the hosts were limited to an 0-for-8 performance with seven miscues.
At one point in the first half, Saint Anselm scored 21 of the game's 23 points to build a strong 33-18 advantage at the break. Arbuckle, who added a last-second basket from beyond the arc, finished with three triples in the first 20 minutes alone.
Saint Anselm by a game-high 20 points with 11:21 left in regulation time before the hosts made things interesting. The Purple Knights made 10 of their last 17 shots and outscored the Hawks by a 27-20 margin, but the early cushion provided by a strong first half preserved the double-digit road win for Saint Anselm.
The Purple Knights held the edge in rebounding (42-to-35), but the Hawks were a combined 9-for-17 from beyond the arc (52.9%), making their shots count.
Saint Anselm hosts Assumption on Tuesday, Jan. 4 at 7:30 p.m. in NE10 play.
