BROOKLINE, Mass. — A huge first-half run paved the way for the Southern Vermont College men's basketball team to capture an 88-59 New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) win over Newbury College Tuesday night at Hellenic College.
The evening started as a tightly-contested matchup before SVC went up big on a 30-2 surge midway through the first period. Southern Vermont went into halftime ahead 54-22 and then maintained its large separation through the second stanza to close out the Conference victory.
The Mountaineers improve to 17-3 on the year and 11-0 in league action, next making a visit to Mitchell College on Saturday for a 3 p.m. NECC tip-off. SVC has now won its last nine games this year and its last four straight meetings against the Nighthawks.
SVC senior DeShawn Hamlet (Hartford, Conn.) tallied a game-high 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the floor, adding eight rebounds, two assists and two steals to his line. Junior Nate Goldsmith (Capitol Heights, Md.) registered his first double-double as a Mountaineer, scoring 15 points while pulling down a career-best 11 rebounds in just 16 minutes off the bench. Fellow junior Rayshawn Taylor (Silver Spring, Md.) had another 15 points and six boards in reserve time while senior Casey Hall (Albany, N.Y.) recorded 10 points, nine rebounds and three assists on the night.
Southern Vermont knocked down the team's most regulation free throws in the last nine seasons, going a stellar 31-for-36 (86.1 percent) from the charity stripe; that single-game performance was behind only the Mountaineers' seven-overtime contest against Skidmore in November of 2010 in which SVC was 33-for-51 (64.7 percent). Southern Vermont shot 38.8 percent (26-67) from the floor Tuesday night while Newbury finished with a 33.3 percent (23-69) clip from field goal range. SVC grabbed 57 rebounds to the Nighthawks' 39, and the Mountaineers outscored NC both in points off turnovers (26-11) and points in the paint (38-30).
Newbury opened the game with a slight 4-2 lead, only to see Hall score six unanswered points of his own to put SVC back in front. Taylor completed an and-one play to push it up to five, and the teams traded scores over the next few minutes as the Nighthawks kept themselves in striking distance. An NC three-pointer made it a 15-14 Mountaineer lead at the 13:05 mark of the first, but that's when SVC stormed to a 30-2 run through the ensuing 10 minutes of play to take a commanding lead. Hamlet had eight points in that time while senior William Bromirski (Cambridge, N.Y.) added another six, and sophomore Daemond Carter (Forestville, Md.) dropped a pair of treys late in the stretch to help extend the upper hand.
After Newbury tallied four unanswered points in an attempt to inch back into the game, SVC downed eight straight from the free throw line; Taylor sank the first four of those freebies, making way for the Mountaineers to take a strong 54-22 lead into the locker room.
Bromirski started the final 20 minutes of action with a three-pointer, and Hamlet soon followed with one of his own for Southern Vermont to extend its upper hand to 36. Baskets went back-and-forth before Newbury notched seven straight with the help of a triple, making it 66-37 with 12:21 to go in the second. Taylor would drain a bucket from downtown and then an ensuing layup, being sandwiched by a pair of Goldsmith scores from the post to bump the Mountaineer advantage back over 30 points. SVC closed out the final minutes with a handful of baskets from the line, walking out with the big win for the season sweep of NC.