MEDFORD Mass. – Freshman Adam Jurko (Weston, Fla.) scored a career-high 28 points and MIT held off Tufts University in the final minute for a 72-69 men's basketball victory. The Engineers led for all but 40 seconds in the contest and improved to 3-1 while the Jumbos dropped their first game of the year, falling to 2-1. Sophomore Vincent Pace led Tufts with 15 points and eight rebounds.
Tufts junior Tarik Smith hit a three with 32 seconds left in regulation to pull the Jumbos within 71-69. After the Engineers missed a pair of free throws, the Jumbos had the ball, down two, but turned it over with 10 seconds remaining. Freshman Cameron Korb (Los Gatos, Calif.) hit one of two free throws with four seconds left for a 72-69 advantage before Smith's half-court heave to tie it bounced off the front of the rim to end the game.
Jurko scored 11 points in the first 6:15 of the second half and MIT had its largest lead at 55-40. The Jumbos chipped away with a 12-3 run to get it down to six at 58-52 on sophomore Stefan Duvivier's lay-up with 10:16 on the clock.
Over the next seven minutes MIT would keep the Jumbos at an arm's length until Pace hit a three with 3:35 remaining to pull the hosts within 65-62. Lay-ups by freshman Bradley Jomard (Paris, France) and Jurko put the Engineers up 69-62, but the Jumbos again whittled it to three at 69-66 on junior Tom Palleschi's lay-up at 1:51. Tufts wasn't able to get over the hump though.
Junior Tim Butala (Monroe, Conn.) hit a three-pointer to start the game to put MIT on top, but Tufts came back to take a 4-3 lead after a layup from Ryan Spadaford at the 17:21 mark. A three-point play by Jurko had MIT up 16-10 midway through the half, and the Engineers pushed their advantage to 27-16 after a trey by when senior Ryan Frankel (New York, N.Y.).
With a little more than three minutes left MIT had a 12-point lead after a three-pointer from Jomard, but Tufts battled back to close the gap at halftime. The Jumbos held MIT to just two free throws over the final minutes of the half and outscored the Engineers 7-2 the rest of the way to trail 38-31 going into the final 20 minutes.
Jurko scored his 28 points on 11 for 23 shooting with four three-pointers on six attempts. He also had five rebounds and three assists. Jomard scored 18 (7/14 FGs) with nine rebounds and Butala added 11 points with eight rebounds. Frankel added six assists to his nine points. Four Jumbos scored in double digits as Palleschi, sophomore Ben Engvall and Smith all had 10. Palleschi added nine rebounds and five blocks.
Tufts travels to Rhode Island College for a non-league game on Saturday at 1 pm. MIT is at Fitchburg State on Saturday at 3 pm.
Tufts Sports Information Contributed to this release