The Emory men's basketball team staged a furious second-half rally Thursday afternoon against Washington & Lee, cutting a 21-point second-half deficit to one point, but fell short in its attempt as the Generals held off the Eagles by an 86-75 margin in a game played at the Woodruff PE Center. The loss dropped Emory's overall record to 7-2 while the Generals upped their overall slate to 7-2.
Emory trailed by an 18-point margin at halftime, 43-25, and faced a 52-31 obstacle with 17:22 left in the contest before mounting its comeback bid. The Eagles trailed by a 55-37 count with 15:37 left on the clock before rattling off a 15-0 run that trimmed the Generals' advantage to 55-52 with 11:03 remaining. Five different players took part in the scoring onslaught with junior Justin Resnick starting things off with a three-point field goal and junior Austin Claunch and freshman Jake Davis contributing back-to-back three-point plays to aid in the cause. After Washington & Lee built back a five-point edge, 59-54, a three-pointer by sophomore Alex Greven kept the pressure on and drew Emory to within two points, 59-57, with 9:26 left. A 6-2 W&L spurt, capped by a jumper by Kyle Bond upped its lead to six points, however Emory used a triple by Claunch and a layup by Resnick to creep to 65-64 with 6:22 remaining. That would prove to be as close as Emory would get as the Generals tallied eight unanswered points to take 73-64 lead with 3:50 left. Emory got to within six points with 2:00 left on the clock, but W&L kept Emory at bay by scoring nine of its final 11 points from the charity stripe.
Claunch led the Emory scoring attack with 16 points, 13 coming in the second half, while Greven picked up 14 points. Rounding out the double-figure scorers for Emory was freshman Jake Davis with 11 points. Davis also grabbed a team-high seven rebounds, the fourth time this year he has led the team in that category.
Jeremy Adkins paced four double-figure scorers for Washington & Lee with 15 points. Larry Whitaker came off the bench to add 13 points along with a game-high eight rebounds.
Emory was plagued by cold shooting in the opening half, hitting just 21.9 percent (23-of-69) from the floor while the Generals knocked down 58.6 percent (17-of-29) of their tries. Emory trailed by just five points, 20-15, with 9:20 left in the stanza but saw the visitors close out the half on a 23-10 run, including a 7-0 spurt over the last 3:17.
For the game, Emory shot a season-low 33.3 percent (23-of-69) from the floor with W&L draining 63.8 percent (30-of-47).
Emory returns to action on Sunday (Jan. 2) when it hosts Huntingdon College in a 4:00 p.m. start