Men's basketball rallies from down 12, claims 66-65 victory over Saint Anselm
COLCHESTER, Vt. - Sophomore Mike Holton Jr. (Portland, Ore./The Winchendon School) hit a go-ahead three-pointer with 2:34 remaining, and the Saint Michael's College men's basketball team erased a 12-point second-half deficit before holding off Saint Anselm College, 66-65, on Saturday at the Ross Sports Center. The Purple Knights, now 10-15 overall and 9-12 in the Northeast-10 Conference after the Senior Day victory, remain in the postseason hunt, while the Hawks slipped to 12-13 and 10-11.
Saint Michael's, which needs a win over visiting Southern New Hampshire University during each team's regular-season finale on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m., is 12th in the league, one game behind a trio of teams tied for ninth.
Freshman Corey Crawford (Dover, Del./The Phelps School) led all Purple Knights with 16 points in addition to six rebounds and three assists, while Holton had 11 points. Junior Travis Warech (Pine Brook, N.J./Montville) added 10 points, as he is two points short of becoming the 13th Purple Knight junior to notch 1,000 career points. Senior Tyler Schilling (Excelsior, Minn./Minnetonka) scored nine points and added nine rebounds, becoming the first Saint Michael's player in 37 years to reach the 870-board plateau. With 878, he is two shy of matching Rich Tarrant '65 for fifth in program history.
Junior Derek Knutty (Rocklin, Calif./Whitney) added seven points, and freshman James Cambronne (De Bary, Fla./The Winchendon School) Cambronne blocked three shots. With 42 rejections this season, Cambronne has the most by a Purple Knight first-year since Michel Bonebo '90 blocked 71 in 1986-87.
Sophomore Allen Harris (Roslindale, Mass./Suffield Academy) paced all scorers with 21 points for the Hawks, adding eight boards and shooting 8-of-8 from the charity stripe. Freshman Roy Mabrey (Belmar, N.J./Saint Thomas More) had 12 points, and sophomore Dominic Borelli (Westbrook, Maine/Westbrook) totaled 11 points and six rebounds.
After trailing by 12 early in the first half, free throws by Knutty cut the Saint Michael's deficit to one at both 9:05 and 8:16, and Schilling and Cambronne sandwiched buckets around Holton's go-ahead triple during a tide-changing 7-0 run. The Purple Knights led 62-58 after a Cambronne hoop and 66-62 following a pair of Holton freebies with 11.2 seconds to go, but the visitors hit a three-pointer with 4.0 ticks remaining. After two missed free throws by the hosts with 3.1 seconds left, the visitors grabbed the rebound but couldn't get off a winning attempt.
Saint Anselm turned a 12-0 advantage in points off of turnovers into a 37-28 edge by halftime, using an 8-0 run to erase an early 4-2 deficit. The Purple Knights twice cut the margin to three points, for the second time on a Warech three-pointer at 13:44 of the opening half that made the score 13-10, but the Hawks ballooned their lead to 26-16 on a Harris triple. Freshman Mike Thompson's (Rosedale, N.Y./Christ The King) put-back off of a miss brought Saint Michael's within five before the visitors twice pushed their advantage to 11 points.
Harris' bucket at 16:31 of the second half had Saint Anselm ahead by a 44-32 count, and a triple by the Hawks kept the advantage at 50-40 with 12:59 left before the hosts went on a 22-8 spurt to forge the victory.
In addition to Schilling, senior Tom Ward (Brighton, East Sussex, England/Saint Francis [N.Y.]) was honored prior to the contest as part of Senior Day.
