The Oglethorpe men's basketball team hung with the homestanding Centre Colonels for much of the contest Sunday afternoon in Danville, Kentucky, but the home side pulled away late for an 81-63 victory. The loss dropped the Stormy Petrels to 9-7 on the season overall and 3-2 in SAA play, pushing them into a three-way tie for third place in the league.
The Petrels were down just 32-27 at the break and pushed even closer to start the second half. They made their first two shots of the period to tie the score 32-32 less than a minute in. They continued to hang around through the early part of the second half. They never took the lead, but a layup from sophomore guard Carlos Sone made the score 38-36 at the 16:25 mark and a jump shot from junior guard Dimetri Chambers made it 40-38 with 14:30 to play. Sone made a pair of free throws with 12 minutes left to make the score 43-41, as well, but Centre began the run which would turn the game in their favor at that point. They embarked on an 11-2 spurt over less than 2 minutes to give themselves a 54-43 edge with 9:50 left. That continued with an 11-3 Centre run shortly after that, giving the home side a 67-51 advantage with 5:15 remaining. The visitors got no closer than 10 points the rest of the way after that.
Oglethorpe took an early 9-4 lead with 15:30 remaining on the clock, but an 11-2 run from Centre vaulted them ahead 15-11 at the 11:15 mark. A 5-point run from Chambers gave Oglethorpe the lead back, but the Colonels went back ahead and didn't relinquish the lead for the remainder of the period. The Petrels remained close the rest of the half, however, never leading by more than 6 points.
Centre shot 50 percent from the field and held the Petrels to 39.7 percent. Oglethorpe sank 84.6 percent of their free throws, but it wasn't enough to keep them in the game late. The Petrels only tallied four assists on 23 made baskets.
Sone led the Petrels on the afternoon, scoring 19 points on 6-of-9 from the field and 5-of-5 from the free throw line while grabbing 13 rebounds. Chambers recorded his tenth 20-point game of the season and his fifth in a row, scoring 22 while sinking 5 of 6 from the line.
"I thought we competed well," said Oglethorpe head coach Philip Ponder, "but midway through the second half, Art Walker [who finished with 28 points on 6-of-11 from beyond the arc] got super hot. When they started to pull away, I thought we took a couple of rushed shots, and the game got away from us late."
The Petrels return to Dorough Field House on Friday, where they'll take on the Millsaps Majors at 8 p.m. The Petrels then welcome Birmingham-Southern Sunday at 3 p.m.