On Monday, January 19, 8 p.m. the men’s basketball team faced Keystone College at Nerney Field House. The Cavaliers held the top spot in the CSAC Conference rankings before Monday’s 95-93 loss. This loss breaks the three-game win streak and brings the Cavs to a 9-7 overall record and 6-3 in the conference. The Cavaliers will now drop in the conference rankings.
Senior Aaron Walton Moss led the pack with 29 points, five rebounds and 10 assists. Freshman Jair Green jumped into the mix with 22 points and nine boards. Senior Howard Blake III pitched in with 10 points and fellow freshman Tyheim Monroe recorded 13 points, four steals, and six rebounds.
From the tip off the score was close. There were not any drastic runs or lead changes for either team. The game started out slow for the most part and maintained that way fairly up to the end of the first half.
“The flow of the game was a little slow. We usually like to get out in transition a little more,” Ryan Charity, sophomore guard, said. “They were playing a lot of zone and so were we, so it slowed the tempo down.”
Both teams played well, Keystone led going into halftime with a four point advantage leaving the score 46-42, making 11 first half three pointers.
The second half was pretty similar to the first. The pace of the second half picked up a little towards the 10-minute mark, where the Cavs took a 9-0 run to bring the score to 77-69 with 6:30 left to play. Minutes after, the Giants pulled out a spurt, taking them on a 15-2 run, which gave them the lead of 86-81 with 2:52 left to play. As the time wound down the Cavs gathered their toughness and went head to head with Keystone bringing the score closer and closer with only seconds to play. A miraculous three point shot off the glass, by senior guard Aaron Walton-Moss, with only seconds on the clock brought the Cavs even closer to be down by only one point, 94-93.
It was not enough to pull the Cavs ahead in the game. Keystone knocked down a pair of free throws with 1.3 seconds left on the clock sealing Cabrini off from a win. “I felt like we gave it away,” Walton-Moss said, “We played like we didn’t want to win.”
