COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – A well-timed scoring flurry by senior Matt Knowles and a lock-down defensive effort down the stretch helped the Ursinus College men's basketball team remain unbeaten in Centennial Conference play with an 80-68 victory over McDaniel on Saturday. Knowles scored eight straight points during the game-sealing run as the Bears held off a Green Terror comeback that had cut a 15-point second-half lead to just three.
Josh McWilliams led all scorers with 29 points for McDaniel (2-4, 0-3), including a bucket during a 12-2 spurt that pulled the Green and Yellow to within 62-59 with 9:26 to play. Nick Perugino drained two treys and Isaac Ray capped the rally with a pair of free throws. That's when Knowles took over.
The Bears' captain started his impressive individual sequence with a tough drive down the left side of the lane and, two possessions later, got a pass from sophomore Eric Williams Jr. off a back screen and buried a deep 3-pointer to stretch the lead back to eight at 67-59. After a Green Terror timeout, Knowles converted a traditional three-point play to push the spread back out to double digits, and McDaniel did not threaten again. The Bears (5-1, 3-0) held the Green Terror to just three points over the next nearly seven minutes of game time to move to 3-0 in league play for the first time since their perfect 18-0 run in 2007.
Knowles finished with a team-high 17 points for Ursinus, Eric Williams pitched in 12, and sophomore Zack Muredda came through with 10 off the bench – all of them in the first half.
Knowles' do-it-all stretch may have swung the game late, but it was the Bears' balance that carried the day. Nine different players scored at least five points, and five recorded multiple assists. Sophomore Joseph LoStracco was 4 for 4 from the field en route to eight points, and junior Brian Rafferty had eight as well. Freshman Shane Stark collected seven points and six rebounds, junior Zach Quattro produced seven points, and sophomore Matt Williams scored six. Junior Remi Janicot had five points and matched Stark with six boards.
Knowles led the way with four assists for the Bears, who shot 55.6 percent from the field just two days removed from making 60.0 percent of its shots in a 102-86 victory at F&M. Ursinus played from ahead from the opening tip for the second straight contest, using a 36-22 advantage in the paint and a 31-17 edge in bench points to keep the Green Terror at arm's length.
The Bears came out firing right off the opening tip, starting with triples by Knowles and Eric Williams on their first two possessions. Ursinus made six 3-pointers in the first seven minutes and change, including back-to-back deep balls out of the hands of Muredda that gave the home side the lead for good at 20-14.
Ursinus began to pull away around the 5-minute mark of the frame, when LoStracco put back a missed triple to bring on a double-digit lead at 33-23. On the ensuing possession, Stark's emphatic block kick-started a dazzling fast break that ended with Muredda hitting LoStracco wide open under the basket with a no-look pass, bringing a large crowd to its feet. Knowles connected on a step-back jumper and scored off his own steal to supply a 15-point lead as the Bears took a 45-31 margin into the break.
Muredda (10 points) and LoStracco (8) each went a perfect 4 for 4 from the field in the first period for Ursinus, which shot 18 of 31 (58.1 percent) and could have led by even more had McDaniel not made eight of its first 13 from the floor and gone 50.0 percent (11 of 22) for the stanza.
McWilliams, who led all scorers with 13 points in the first half, stayed hot to start the second, drilling two 3-pointers in the opening minutes that served as a precursor to McDaniel's resistance. The Green Terror went 7 for 14 from beyond the arc in the second stanza and shot 10 of 21 (47.6 percent) for the day.
The men's basketball team will welcome preseason CC favorite Swarthmore to Helfferich Hall for a highly anticipated showdown on Wednesday, December 7, at 8:00 p.m.
