Men's College Basketball
Manhattan College 71, Rider University 55
LAWRENCEVILLE-The Broncs lost a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference game to Manhattan Friday night, held to a season low point total. "Offensively it was a pretty dismal performance," said Rider head coach Tommy Dempsey.
Rider faced a Manhattan zone defense for most of the game.
"We settled for a lot of jump shots," Dempsey said. "We are a team that does shoot a lot of jump shots so I thought we'd be okay against a zone but we never really got it going."
Trailing 35-33, Manhattan (4-4, 1-0 MAAC) out-scored Rider 24-9, six points by Michael Alvarado, to take a 57-44 lead with 2:55 left to play. That was the ninth and final lead change.
Alvarado finished with 17 points, as did teammate George Beamon. Beamon entered the game averaging 15 points and 5 rebounds per game off the bench. Beamon started Friday and grabbed six rebounds. Alvarado made seven of nine foul shots.
Trailing 30-25 early in the second half, Rider (1-7, 0-1) went on a 10-3 run, six points by senior Jeff Jones (Chester, PA/Monsignor Bonner), to take a 35-33 lead. Jones finished with 14 points. "On nights like this when we don't shoot well we have to work on other things," Jones said, "like playing hard, rebounding."
Manhattan led 26-25 at the half. The first half had seven lead changes and 10 ties.
Senior Novar Gadson (Philadelphia, Pa./John Bartram) led the Broncs with 16 points and six rebounds.
Sophomore Daniel Stewart (Philadelphia, PA/Neumann-Goretti) added 10 points and four rebounds for Rider. Stewart's dunk tied the score at 32-32 3:40 into the second half and brought some life into the crowd of 1,602 in Alumni Gymnasium. "It kind of brought us to life," Stewart said, "but we never capitalized on it after that."
For Manhattan, Rhamel Brown compiled nine points, 12 rebounds and five blocked shots off the bench.
Manhattan out-rebounded Rider 40-26. Rider shot just 32.7 percent from the field and made just six of 29 three-pointers (20.7 percent). "Over the course of 29 threes I am sure there were some ones that weren't great," Dempsey said. "I'd say that we got 18 to 20 pretty good looks that didn't go in."
"We have a lot of good shooters," Stewart said. "We're just not shooting the ball well right now."
Rider had won eight of the last nine meetings with Manhattan, including the last four.
The last time Rider was 1-7 was during the 1986-87 season. "We're a bit shaken, confidence-wise, right now," Dempsey said.
The Broncs and Jaspers have now met 38 times since the series began in 1929-30, with Rider winning 20, including an 88-78 decision in the last meeting, January 3, 2011 in Alumni Gym. Since Rider joined the MAAC, the Broncs are 19-12 against the Jaspers.
Rider travels to Poughkeepsie, NY Sunday to take on Marist in the final MAAC game before January. "Back to work tomorrow," Dempsey said. "There is no way out of this except for hard work. We'll continue to fight our way through this. Hopefully we'll start playing better basketball, get a win Sunday, and start feeling better about ourselves."
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