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Video HighlightsBLOOMSBURG -
Christian Mortellite (Hammonton, N.J./Hammonton) scored a team-high 19 points to help the Bloomsburg University men's basketball team to an 80-74 win over Cheyney University on Wednesday night in PSAC (Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference) play. The win was the 100
th in the career of Huskies head coach
John Sanow.
The Huskies (9-10, 5-10 PSAC) jumped out to an early 11-5 lead just four minutes into the game with Mortellite scoring five early points. The Wolves came back using a 9-2 run to go on top 14-13 with 14:17 to go in the first half. The lead would turn out to be the only one of the night for the visitors.
Bloomsburg came back and regained the lead on a
Moustapha Noumbissi (Upper Darby/Delaware County Christian School)'s layup, then slowly built its advantage to double digits. The Huskies went up 29-19 on Mortellite's 3-pointer with 8:01 to play in the half and stretched the lead to 15 points late in the half on a layup by Haigler making it 40-25. Cheyney though was able to narrow the gap to just nine points at halftime using an 8-2 run to head to the break down, 42-33.
In the opening 20 minutes of play Bloomsburg controlled the paint outscoring the Wolves 28-18 in the lane.
The second half of play saw the Huskies push the lead back to 15 points on two occasions, the last coming with 14:08 to play when
Charles Haigler (Charles Town, WV/Hargrave Military Academy) hit two free throws for a 54-39 Bloomsburg lead.
Cheyney though would not go away and cut the lead back to single digits on a layup with 10:22 to play.
Alssene Saintilus (Williamstown, NJ/Williamstown) countered with a traditional 3-point play for the Huskies putting the home team back up 61-50 with 9:28 to play. Later with Bloomsburg on top 67-57 the Wolves went on an 8-0 run to pull within a bucket at 67-65 with 4:38 to play. Kevin Larkin drained two 3-pointers for the top shooting 3-point team in the PSAC on consecutive trips down the floor to bring Cheyney close.
After
Anthony McKie (Blue Bell/Plymouth Whitemarsh)'s layup made it 69-65, Saintilus scored five straight points for a 74-65 Bloomsburg lead with 1:17 to go. The Wolves did get back to within five points at 79-74 with 15 seconds to go, but misfired on its final two 3-point attempts to give the Huskies a victory.
The win for Sanow makes him just the third coach in school history to reach 100 wins joining Charlie Chronister (559) and Harold Shelly (112) in the 100-win club. Bloomsburg has been playing basketball since 1901 and has had 21 coaches.
Along with Mortellite in double figures for Bloomsburg, Saintilus got 16 points and 12 rebounds, while Noumbissi added 12 points and had nine rebounds.
Jameal Tucker (Philadelphia/Academy at Palumbo) came off the bench to score 10 points.
Cheyney (1-19, 0-15 PSAC) got 24 points from Larkin and 17 from Jerrod Johnson in the loss.
The Huskies visit Shippensburg on Saturday starting at 3 p.m.
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