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Scoreless stretch keeps Knights men's basketball out of win column against Gordon, 78-59

Posted 11/18/18

Westfield, MA – A strong first half by the Clarkson University Men's Basketball team was nullified by a 12 minutes, 28 second scoreless drought in the second half as the Golden Knights were on the …

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Scoreless stretch keeps Knights men's basketball out of win column against Gordon, 78-59

Posted

Westfield, MA – A strong first half by the Clarkson University Men's Basketball team was nullified by a 12 minutes, 28 second scoreless drought in the second half as the Golden Knights were on the wrong end of a 30-0 run in a 78-59 loss against Gordon College in the consolation game of the Rick Martin Invitational on Saturday afternoon.

The Golden Knights fell to 0-3 on the season and will try to get on the winning track when they face Oswego State on Tuesday evening. Gordon College improved to 2-1.

A day after struggling from the perimeter, it appeared as if Clarkson was back to its hot shooting ways from outside as Matthew Hornak buried three 3-pointers in the first four minutes to put Clarkson up 13-6. A Jason Phelps 3-pointer at 13:46 gave the Knights another seven-point advantage as Clarkson made four of its first eight attempts from long range. Although Clarkson would maintain the lead for the rest of the first half, the Knights started to struggle a bit from outside, making only two of their next 13 attempts from the arc. Clarkson made up for the deficiency with some solid inside play and pushed the advantage back up to seven again on a Roburt Welch jumper at 4:20. Three-pointers from Chris Hulbert and Hornak extended the lead to 10 (42-32) with 1:44 remaining and another 3-pointer from Joe Lucas in the final minute allowed Clarkson to head to the locker room with a comfortable nine-point advantage.

The Knights committed just a single turnover in the first half, helping Clarkson keep the lead despite a 30-17 deficit on the glass.

While Clarkson continued to do a good job of limiting its mistakes with just five turnovers in the second half, the shots stopped falling almost immediately. Liam Ellis drove to the basket and converted a layup at 16:29 to put the Knights up 51-45, but those were the last points that Clarkson would get for more than 12 minutes. Matt Higgins finally broke the 30-0 run by Gordon with a free throw at 4:01, but it wasn't until Malaquias Canery hit a shot that Clarkson scored another basket. By that point the deficit was too much to overcome, though a 3-pointer from Keenan Gayle with 2:24 to go finally ended a streak of 16 straight misses from beyond the arc in the second half.

Hornak scored all of his team-high 12 points in the first half while Phelps had nine of his 11 points in the first and Welch added eight of his 10 points also in the first 20 minutes. Reese Swedberg contributed 6 rebounds and 5 assists while Liam Ellis put together a line of 6 points, 4 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals for Clarkson.

For the Scots, Garrison Duvivier produced a solid all-around game with 16 points, 21 rebounds and 7 assists and Eric Demers added 18 points. Parker Omslaer also nabbed a double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds and Noah Szilagyi nearly repeated the feat with 10 points and 8 rebounds.