LOS ANGELES — Kris Montoya scored 22 points and Juwan Rice added 18.

But the Occidental College men's basketball team struggled to avoid giving Chapman easy looks in an 86-78 loss to the Panthers at Rush Gymnasium on Wednesday.

The Tigers fall to 10-12 overall and 5-8 in SCIAC play. Chapman moves to 13-9 and 7-6.

Taylor Hamasaki and Colin Zavrsnick each finished with 23 points for the Panthers.

"They have two All-SCIAC guards that we just couldn't defend tonight," Oxy head coach Brian Newhall said. "We didn't do a good job of executing defensively and when they did miss we couldn't get a rebound."

The Panthers shot 56 percent from the field and 65 percent in the first half.

Oxy could never quite get over the hump in the second half after falling behind 43-34. The Panthers slowly opened up a 15-point lead in the first 10 minutes of the second half. Twice the Tigers cut it to 10 points in the last 10 minutes, but Hamasaki countered both times. First, he hit a contested 3-pointer with 8:25 to play and later converted an and-one in transition with 6 minutes to play.

Jay Miller had nine points for Oxy in his second game back after missing time with an injury before fouling out with 6 minutes to go.

Oxy big men Ty Cobb and Andrew Johnson each scored eight points.

Oxy returns to action on Saturday against Whittier at 5 p.m. in its final home game of the season.

"We'll be hungry and ready to compete this Saturday," Newhall said. "They got us pretty good at their place so I expect our guys to play hard and take advantage of their opportunity."