CARLISLE, Pa. – A ruthlessly efficient performance from inside the arc led the Ursinus College men's basketball team up the Centennial Conference standings. The Bears got a season-high 27 points from senior Matt Knowles and shot 64.1 percent on 2-point field goals to secure an 81-74 victory at Dickinson in a battle for second place in the league standings.
Knowles misfired on five of his six 3-point attempts but made eight of ten inside the line, the theme of a very productive night for Ursinus (8-6, 5-2), which improved to 4-0 on the road in conference play. The Bears committed 15 turnovers to Dickinson's four and shot a measly 4 for 19 from beyond the arc, but still managed to leave Carlisle with a big league victory in tow thanks to sizeable advantages in rebounding (44-34), points in the paint (42-32), and interior accuracy.
Junior Zach Quattro posted his second straight double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds, including a pair of crucial free throws that gave the Bears a five-point lead with 31.0 seconds remaining. Freshman Shane Stark had 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting and added eight rebounds, while junior Remi Janicot and sophomore Eric Williams Jr. chipped in nine points apiece.
Elijah Wright netted 17 points and Michael Jurzynski 12 for Dickinson (8-6, 5-2), which had eight players score at least six.
Knowles, who had averaged only 8.6 points over his previous five games, broke through with his best game of the season two days removed from a game-winning basket in the closing seconds of an overtime thriller at Washington College. The Bears' co-captain went off for 19 points after halftime, helping to keep the Red Devils at arm's length in a contest that was played within a single-digit spread almost the entire way.
The key sequence came at the 5:39 mark of the second stanza, when a free throw by Moses Romicki sliced the Ursinus lead to 67-66. Knowles ignited an 8-0 run with points on three consecutive possessions, sandwiching four free throws around a driving lay-up, and Stark's finish off a find by Quattro put the Bears up nine with under four minutes to play.
Wright's lay-in closed the gap to 77-74, but Quattro's clutch foul shots ensured the Red Devils would never have a chance to fully make up the ground.
Dickinson scored on the game's first possession, but Janicot and Quattro found the bottom of the net on back-to-back trips and Ursinus never trailed again. The Bears led by double digits twice in the first period, first at 18-8 on a jumper by junior Joseph LoStracco and again on a 3-pointer by sophomore Matt Williams that made it 21-11 at the 11:35 mark. The Red Devils got within 33-32 late in the frame before Knowles buried a 3-pointer, one instance in a pattern of answers that lasted the whole night.
Ursinus, the CC's top scoring offense, shot exactly 50.0 percent from the floor in both halves, finishing 25 of 39 on 2-pointers. The Bears, who came in 16th in Division III in field-goal percentage defense, held Dickinson to a 39.7-percent showing (29 for 73).
After going 7-28 over the last three seasons, the Bears have made themselves right at home on the road. At 5-1 this season, Ursinus is well on its way to its first winning road record since the 2007-08 Final Four squad.
With Swarthmore's loss at Johns Hopkins Thursday, Ursinus finds itself just a game back of the first-place Garnet in the league table. The Bears look to improve their home mark when Gettysburg comes to Helfferich Hall for a CC showdown on Saturday, January 14.