By: Laura Chapman
Assistant Sports Information Director
chapmal@juniata.edu • juniatasports.net
HUNTINGDON, Pa. – The Juniata College men's basketball team built up a 16-point lead (55-39) in the second half against Saint Vincent College (SVC) and held on for the 77-71 win to improve to 4-1 on the year. Senior guard Kevin Stapleton (Indiana, Pa./Indiana) finished with a game-high and career-high 27 points.
"The start was better today," said head coach Greg Curley. "I thought we had a good week of practice. We had a funky week with the game being cancelled Tuesday night. We were worried about weather so we sent everyone home. Some guys could make it back Thanksgiving night and some guys couldn't. With a lot of young guys I was a little worried about how we were going to handle it, but we came in and had a really good practice yesterday, had a really good walkthrough last night and again this morning. I thought we were pretty focused and prepared and I thought that carried over."
At 4-4, senior Brian Scholly (State College, Pa./State College) fed a pass to Stapleton who sunk a three to give the Eagles the 7-4 lead that they would never surrender. Stapleton was 5-6 from behind the arc, 10-11 in field goal shooting, and a perfect 2-2 from the foul line. Juniata as a team shot 72.7% from the free-throw line and notched points from eight different players. Scholly and classmate Lucas Mellott (Warfordsburg, Pa./Southern Fulton) rounded out the top scoring threats for the Eagles with 13 and 14 points respectively.
"Kevin's a really good player," said Curley. "When he's aggressive and confident he can be really impactful and effective. The thing about Kevin, you don't really know how he's playing anywhere on the floor. You wouldn't know how he's shooting by how he's playing anywhere else on the court. That's the sign of what a really good player he is. That's what you need. Between him, Brian, Jeremy Hays and Luke Mellott, who gave great minutes and really got us going in the second half, I think that's where you need seniors and I'm happy with how they stepped up."
The Bearcats did the majority of their damage from seniors Isaac Turner and Dillon Stith who both finished with 24 points. The next highest scorer for SVC had seven points. The Bearcats were able to pull within five (69-64) with just under two minutes remaining, but the Juniata defense held strong to take the lead in the all-time series, 3-2, against SVC under Curley.
"[SVC is] a team that has won 21 games the last several years and gone on to the NCAA tournament," said Curley. "Very rarely in this game do you put a team away. A lot of times you have to build a lead to be able to hold it. We've got to do a lot of things better, but this time of year that's the whole idea – we need to get into these games and see some things."
Sophomore Kyle Koehler (Chester Springs, Pa./Devon Prep.) had a career game, tying his best marks in total points (7), and rebounds (4), and setting new career numbers in blocks (2), and free throws made (5). With 1:07 remaining in the second half, Stapleton sunk his final three of the night to give the Eagles the 72-67 lead. Kohler stepped to the foul line four times in the closing 39 seconds and nailed each shot. The 77 total points is a season high for Juniata.
"We had some young guys in some tough situations," said Curley. "Kyle Kohler was in there late and had to shoot some free throws. Kevin Snyder hasn't played a lot and he was in there in those crunch minutes. We're relying on those guys in some key situations. What I like, we got better from last weekend to this weekend. I told the guys today, what we did today will not be good enough to be successful next week in our first conference game, but if we can make the same progress, we'll have a good chance. We have to keep working on getting better and prove it at as a team."
The Eagles next return home Tuesday Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. when they tip off against Carnegie Mellon University at Kennedy Sports + Recreation Center.
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