Men's Basketball Downed by Le Moyne, 67-54
NORTH ANDOVER, Mass.- The Merrimack men's basketball team dropped a 67-54 decision to Le Moyne Tuesday evening at Volpe Gym. The Warriors fell to 9-4 on the season and 5-4 in the Northeast-10 Conference. The Dolphins improved to 6-8 overall and 4-6 in league action with the win.
Senior Dee Mency (Hagerstown, Md.) led all scorers with a game-high 24 points. Tyler Young (Brooklyn, N.Y.) recorded his fourth-consecutive double-double with 12 points and 11 rebounds while Wayne Mack (Paterson, N.J.) finished with 10. Kevin Regan (Philadelphia, Pa.) registered six points and two boards after earning his first career start.
After a back-and-forth start to the game, Merrimack owned an 18-16 lead after 10 minutes of play. With his third triple of the game, Mency passed Dana Skinner on the all-time career points list and moved into seventh place.
Le Moyne battled back into the game and took the lead with 6:43 remaining in the half and a lay-up by Jim Janson. The Dolphins ran the margin up to 12 points before the Warriors began to chip away at it to bring the score to 38-33 with 1:37 before the break.
The Dolphins went into intermission holding onto a nine-point advantage with the score 42-33.
Mency paced Merrimack through the first stanza with 16 points on 5-of-7 shooting from the floor and 4-of-6 from three-point range. Mack added eight and Young contributed five in the opening frame.
The Warriors fought back to even the score at 50-50 on a steal and a fast break lay-up by Mack with 11:00 left in the game. Aaron Strothers (Wareham, Mass.) gave Merrimack its first lead of the second half on a lay-up.
With eight minutes remaining in the contest, the Dolphins tied the score at 52-52 and went on a 12-2 run to grab a double-figure lead.
Le Moyne kept its distance from Merrimack to walk away with its sixth victory of the season and fourth in the league.
The Warriors shot 37% from the floor and 26% from behind the arc for the night. The Dolphins drained 51% of their field goal attempts and owned a three-point percentage of 46.7 in the game.
Kevin Roth paced Le Moyne with 17 point and Chris Johnson and Nate Champion each had 16.
"We came out strong be couldn't maintain that level of intensity," said head coach Bert Hammel. "Our guys did a great job of fighting back into the game and taking the lead in the second half."
Merrimack continues Northeast-10 Conference play January 15 as it travels to take on Adelphi.
