Men’s Basketball defeated the Lehigh Mountain Hawks 80-72 despite turning the ball over 27 times to earn their second win on the season on Tuesday night. Freshmen combined for 30 of the 80 total points on the game.
Our effort has been tremendous in all the games we’ve had so far,” Head Coach King Rice said. “But you can see, we’re pretty raw right now.”
Lehigh had an early lead against MU, up 19-11 midway through the first half. The Hawks would then go on a 12-0 run to take the lead back from the Mountain Hawks.
Our defense locked in and we started keeping guys in front of us,” Rice said.
Freshman guard Deion Hammond would hit a three to give Monmouth the 26-23 lead and they would not trail from that point on. The half time score would be 33-28 Hawks.
Junior forward Diago Quinn would come alive in the second half, scoring 13 of his 15 total points half. Quinn would score nine straight points for Monmouth on four layups and a free throw, expanding the Hawks lead to 12 points late in the second half.
Monmouth would lead as much as 15 points late in the second half before Lehigh lowered the deficit to a final of eight.
“As a team we took a turn in the second half and I think we were feeding more off each other,” Quinn said. “Coach [Rice] told us we had more assists in this game compared to other games so we’re starting to share the ball more so that’s really what got me good looks.”
The Hawks would shoot 63 percent from the field (17 for 27) in the second half and would go 11-15 from the free throw line.
The Hawks had the advantage over Lehigh on rebounds, having plus-23 over the Mountain Hawks. MU would also force Lehigh to shoot only 27.6 percent from behind the arch.
For the game, Seaborn and Quinn lead the way with 15 points each and a combined 15 rebounds. Freshman guard Ray Salnave added a personal season-best ten points. Hammond had six points on two threes while freshman guard George Papas had eight points.
Monmouth (2-1) is now 2-0 against Patriot League opponents this year, first defeating Bucknell on Friday night. They will next travel to Charlottesville to play Virginia in a Preseason National Invitational Tournament (NIT) Tip-Off game on Sunday, Nov. 19 at 1:00 p.m.
PHOTO COURTESY of Monmouth Athletics
