TROY, N.Y. — The Southern Vermont College men's basketball team won its third straight Tri-state Shootout Tournament Sunday afternoon, defeating the hosting Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Engineers 68-59 in the championship contest at East Campus Arena.
SVC extends its winning streak to six games as the Mountaineers improve to 7-2 on the year with only two more non-conference contests left to go before heading into the heart of the New England Collegiate Conference schedule.
Southern Vermont resumes action on Monday, December 21 with a 5:30 p.m. tip-off at Bate College to wrap up the fall semester.
Mountaineer senior DeShawn Hamlet (Hartford, Conn.) led all players with 19 points while adding six rebounds, three steals, two assists and two blocks. Junior Nate Goldsmith (Capitol Heights, Md.) followed with 10 points and three boards in 15 minutes off the SVC bench, and senior Casey Hall (Albany, N.Y.) tallied nine points, six rebounds and four steals in the win; Hall also notched a pair of blocks, giving him 96 for his Southern Vermont career to become the program's all-time leader in the category.
SVC freshman Josh Borders (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) registered eight points and two assists while sophomore Daemond Carter (Forestville, Md.) and junior Rayshawn Taylor (Silver Spring, Md.) each had six points off the bench.
The Mountaineers shot 37.7 percent (26-69) from the floor as the Engineers went 23-60 (38.3 percent) in field goal range. R.P.I. owned a 47-37 advantage in rebounds, but Southern Vermont was able to limit its turnovers to just 13 while forcing 24 out of the hosts; the giveaways resulted in SVC outscoring R.P.I. 21-12 in points off turnovers as the Mountaineers took a 38-26 edge in the paint.
Southern Vermont scored the first nine points of the game and never looked back on the way to the win. The Engineers cut it to a 9-6 deficit before the teams battled back-and-forth through the midway of the first half. SVC notched five unanswered points to go up 21-11 with 7:12 to play, and a Borders jumper followed a three by Goldsmith to make it 26-13. A pair of Bromirski free throws with 17 ticks on the clock then set the score at 32-20 going into the locker room.
The start of the second half saw SVC open its lead with eight straight points, Hamlet notching four of those to put the Mountaineers up by 20. Rensselaer tried to keep it close with some three-pointers, but Southern Vermont answered each time to keep its separation. The Engineers chipped away in the final few minutes to make it a five-point game with a late 9-0 run, but SVC was able to close it out with an 8-4 stretch in the final 43 seconds to walk out with the win; Hamlet had five points in that spurt, the first three coming on an old-fashioned three-point play to all but end it as the Mountaineers celebrated their third consecutive Tri-state Shootout title.