BENNINGTON, Vt. — After leading by eight at halftime, Southern Vermont College held visiting Green Mountain College to just four field goals in the second stanza while taking to a 74-41 win in non-conference men's basketball play at the Mountaineer Athletic Center Monday night.
With the win in its home opener, SVC starts the season 2-0 for the first time since 2010-11. The Eagles fall to 0-1 to begin the year.
SVC junior forward Casey Hall (Albany, New York) was a pest for the Green Mountain offense all night, blocking eight shots while pulling down six boards off the defensive glass; he added 10 points on the other end of the floor. Junior DeShawn Hamlet (Hartford, Connecticut) came off the bench to lead all players with 15 points to go with seven rebounds.
Classmate Jeff James (Bowie, Maryland) tallied 11 points and two assists, and juniorWilliam Bromirski (Cambridge, New York) chipped in with 10 points and a pair of helpers. Senior captain Dolapo Olugbile (Laurel, Maryland) pitched in with seven points, six rebounds, two assists and two steals.
Eagle junior forward Cameron Anderson (Charlottesville, Virginia) ended with a double-double, dropping a team-high 14 points to go with his game-best 12 rebounds. Freshman Ellijah Williams(Albany, New York) followed with seven points and grabbed four rebounds in the effort.
The Mountaineers' defense was stellar, holding Green Mountain to a 25.9 percent clip from the floor (14-54). Adversely, SVC hit on 28 of its 60 field goal attempts (46.7 percent) while going 7-16 (43.8 percent) from three-point range. Southern Vermont only turned the ball over 12 times all night and forced the Eagles to give it away on 24 occasions.
Olugbile got the Mountaineer faithful on its feet early on, slamming home a two-handed dunk after driving the lane to put his team on top 2-0; SVC never trailed, continuing to be efficient from the floor. Green Mountain made its share of baskets to keep within striking distance, cutting it to 21-19 on an Anderson layup. Southern Vermont scored six unanswered points late in the first half before James got off a buzzer-beating layup for the hosts to take a 36-28 lead into the locker room.
SVC started the second half in similar fashion to the first as James once again energized the crowd with a big dunk. Anderson slammed home one of his own a couple minutes later to make it a 40-33 contest, but Hamlet knocked down a trey on the following possession to keep GMC from gaining too much momentum. The Mountaineers scored the next eight points with Bromirski drilling a three for the 51-33 advantage before Olugbile put the nail in the coffin with under 10 minutes to play; following a Green Mountain missed shot, SVC ran the floor quickly to set up an alley-oop from sophomore Davante Jordan(Great Mills, Maryland) to the captain, a slam that all-but-ended it for the visitors.
Southern Vermont now owns a 4-2 series advantage, having defeated GMC in the last two meetings.
SVC is next on the road for a 7 p.m. Wednesday tip-off at the University of Vermont, the first game for any Mountaineer team against a Division I opponent since men's basketball played at Princeton University in January of 2004. Green Mountain is also traveling Wednesday for a 7 p.m. start, visiting State University of New York at Cobleskill.