BOSTON, Mass. – Southern Vermont College took to a 90-80 New England Collegiate Conference (NECC) men's basketball victory Saturday afternoon, downing Wheelock College at Winsor Court.
SVC went up 51-40 going to the halftime break and was able to maintain its double-digit lead through the final horn.
Southern Vermont moves to 3-2 in Conference play (5-9 overall) with its third-straight win capping a perfect week.
Next up for the Mountaineers is a Tuesday home game against Becker College— that league tilt slated for 7 p.m. Becker will enter the matchup at an unblemished 4-0 in NECC play.
Leading the way for SVC in the points column was senior Ervin Cook (Germantown, Md.) who notched a career-best 23 in 25 minutes off the bench. Classmate Rayshawn Taylor (Silver Spring, Md.) followed with 20 points and five rebounds while fellow senior Nate Goldsmith (Capitol Heights, Md.) tied the game-high of seven rebounds in conjunction with dropping 15 points.
Junior Mike Pierre (Melrose, N.Y.) had 12 points, seven assists and four rebounds for the visitors as sophomore Josh Borders (Miami, Fla.) scored 13 while adding five caroms and three assists to his line. Freshman Damon Daniel (Gaithersburg, Md.) also snagged a game-best seven boards and tallied three assists in 17 minutes of reserve time.
Southern Vermont shot 57.4 percent (35-61) from the floor— that being the team's best field goal percentage since its January 16, 2016 game at Wheelock (57.5 percent). WC went 30-for-62 (48.4 percent) from field goal range during the afternoon. The Mountaineers held a strong 38-25 advantage in rebounds while outscoring the Wildcats 44-32 in the paint.
The two sides traded scores in the early going, but Wheelock's first three baskets came from behind the arc for the hosts to grab a 9-8 edge. The Wildcats would go up by three before Southern Vermont's offense stormed to a 10-0 run over a span of 1:02, Taylor scoring six of those points with the help of a triple. WC's three-point shooting would tie the game at 25-25, however, as Wheelock hit back-to-back treys midway through the half.
Pierre hit a pair of shots before Cook drained one from downtown, and a pair of Goldsmith baskets then started a 14-2 Mountaineer run which put the visitors up 46-33; Borders had five-straight points in that stretch, completing an old-fashioned three-point play as his team went up by 13. Wheelock would hit its sixth triple of the stanza with 1:03 left to go, but Cook made his third of the period in response for Southern Vermont to go into the locker room ahead 51-40.
Buckets went back-and-forth in the onset of the second half as Goldsmith and Taylor each scored four points through the first five minutes to help SVC stay up by double digits. The Wildcats quickly went on an 11-2 run through the middle of the frame— using another three-pointer to get within four. Cook knocked one down of his own from outside the perimeter to give his team some separation, and junior Claude Payne (South Plainfield, N.J.) registered back-to-back layups for the Mountaineers to go in front 74-65.
Cook then dropped his fifth three-pointer of the day with 6:44 to play, and Goldsmith got in on the outside action with another just a couple minutes later for SVC to take a comfortable 85-72 upper hand. Cook added his sixth trey before a Taylor layup gave the visitors their biggest lead of the contest (90-74), putting Southern Vermont on top by a large enough margin to make Wheelock's 6-0 game-ending run insignificant.
– #LetsGoSVC –