The Oglethorpe men's basketball team had a rough night Wednesday at Dorough Field House, falling behind in-state opponent Piedmont by 20 points in the first half en route to an 85-64 defeat to the visiting Lions. The result drops them to 1-1 on the young season.

The Stormy Petrels did get a couple of solid performances from sophomore forward Will Perry and sophomore guard Justin Edwards over the course of the game. Perry scored 18 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, recording the first double-double of his career, while Edwards had another quality performance off the bench, adding 18 points of his own on 7-of-14 shooting. However, it wasn't enough to help the Petrels to victory on the night.

Piedmont was off and running from the opening tip, pushing out to a huge first-half lead which the Petrels were never able to recover from. After the teams traded baskets a couple of times to open the game, the visiting Lions began a run which lasted 12 minutes and significantly shaped the outcome of the game. The spurt wound up at 26-6, giving Piedmont a 32-12 lead with 5:54 remaining in the half. The Petrels followed with a 12-5 run over the next four minutes to cut the Lion lead to 13 points, 37-24, with 1:34 remaining in the half, but the visitors quickly pushed it back out with a 7-0 run to end the half, retaking their 20-point advantage headed into the locker room.

Piedmont pushed their lead as high as 23 points early in the second half, extending their run at the end of the first half to 14-4 bridged into the second. The Lions held a 51-28 advantage with 16:55 remaining. The Petrels quickly fought back, scoring 12 straight points over the next 2:30 to shrink the lead down to 51-40 with 14:28 left. Piedmont extended their lead back up to 20 just as quickly, though, running off nine straight points of their own over the next 2:30 after the Petrel run and leading 60-40 with 11:48 left. Oglethorpe got as close as 14 points with 8:29 left, but the Lions again ran right back out to a 21-point lead with 6:38 left, securing the victory.

Piedmont outshot the Petrels 46-to-35 percent, including 37-to-19 percent from the three-point line. They also outrebounded Oglethorpe 52-39, including 21-15 on the offensive glass. The visitors also outscored Oglethorpe 46-28 in the paint over the course of the game. The Petrels did enjoy a significant advantage in bench scoring, outpacing Piedmont 31-17 in that category.

"I knew with a young team we were going to have a learning curve," said Head Coach Philip Ponder. "We only have three guys that averaged double-digit minutes last year, and one of those only played seven games because of injury. Sometimes you can learn more from a loss than from a win, and we learned tonight we have a long way to go and a lot to work on. Sometimes you get outplayed, but you should never get outworked, and we didn't match Piedmont's intensity tonight, especially in the first half. This hopefully serves as a wake-up call. It's a long season and we just have to focus on getting a little better each and every day."

The Petrels look to bounce back against another in-state, non-conference opponent Saturday, as they welcome Covenant to the Blacktop at 6 p.m. After that, they'll head up to Maryville, Tennessee, for the Maryville Classic over Thanksgiving weekend, where they'll take on Maryville and LaGrange.