CLINTON, S.C. -The Presbyterian
College men's basketball team defeated Montreat 68-50 in the home opener to give the Blue Hose
their second victory of the season. Redshirt
freshman Jake Troyli set a personal record in the win and led all scorers with
his 22 points.
PC had four scorers in double digits, with Walt Allen, Khalid Mutakabbir
and Chase Holmes joining Troyli with 12, 11 and 10 points, respectively. Troyli also hauled in eight rebounds to lead
PC, and as a team the Blue Hose collected 16 steals.
Coming out of the locker room for the start of the second half, the Blue
Hose owned a five point lead that they held for the first three minutes before
Montreat cut the deficit to two points of a three point shot. PC's defense, however, came up strong in the
second half as Montreat never got any closer and the Blue Hose held Montreat to
a 14.3 percent field goal percentage in the half.
The strong defensive effort resulted in two fast breaks in a row, with
Travis Smith and Mutakabbir sinking layups to extend PC's lead to ten points
with 8:40 remaining in the
game. Just over a minute later,
Mutakabbir slammed home another fast break opportunity to bring the score to
54-41 in favor of the home
team.
PC closed out the game with a three point play from Mutakabbir, who sank
the free throw after being fouled on the layup.
The Blue Hose came away with the victory, 68-50 for their second win in
a row.
PC started the scoring early in the game when Troyli hit a jumper at the
19:48 mark. Montreat then took a point lead off of two
free throws that it would hold until 8:58. Down by five points at one point in the half,
the Blue Hose took a fast break layup from Faircloth and a pair of free throws
from Troyli to lead 17-16 with just under nine minutes remaining.
At 7:42 Chase Holmes
scored on another fast break to extend PC's lead to 21-16. After Montreat responded with a three point
shot to bring the score to 21-19, PC got another layup from Faircloth at the 7:00 mark. While Montreat
would close the gap to three points with 4:15 left in the half, the Blue Hose
would pull away by as many as 10 points, and eventually took a 35-30 lead into
the locker rooms at halftime.
With the win, PC advances to 2-5 on the year, and Montreat falls to
2-7. The Blue Hose are back in action
Thursday when they take on High Point at the Templeton Center. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m.
