Metro Lex News

Men's Basketball falls short after break to Manchester 86-78

Our Pioneers are coming out of their Thanksgiving break rested and ready for more travel. The Men's Basketball Team was up in Indiana to face Manchester University in a regular season HCAC matchup. The Pioneers came off a win in their last game against Centre where they tried to continue to ride the hot hands of Colby Napier for today's matchup.

This however wasn't the case today falling short to the Knights 78-86 in a competitive inside battle today. Sophomore Forward Hunter Penn was the Pios second leading scorer today with 16 total along with a block and a steal. It was a consistent one for Transylvania with 46.88% of their total field goals hitting in the first half only down by 8 at half. Head Coach Brian Lane had some thoughts going into halftime:

"We were not able to neutralize their guards on the defensive in the first half.  We were passive with only 1 foul in 20 minutes on the road", also adding, "Penn and Smith needed to step up because of our size advantage and they delivered on the half court."

In the second half the Pioneers looked to make a comeback lead by Simon Smith who ended today with the team high 23 providing some serious spacing hitting 5-6 from 3 and 6-7 from the field. Smith earned a new career high in this game after that performance while trying to provide the spark after making it 70-70 late in the second but we couldn't pull through.  

Coach Lane had this to say after the lose:

"We have a goal as a team to commit 10 turnovers or less as a team and we exceeded that by a large margin. We tried all week to emphasize to Jaylan and Colby that they needed to rebound more for us and it was their best rebounding game of the year." later reminiscing on some key parts saying, "We put them on the foul line for only 2 free throws in the first half and then when we picked up our aggressiveness they marched to the line 26 times in the second half.  They were the aggressor and we didn't handle it well at all."

•    Green 15 points and 7 assists 12 rebounds

•    Napier 10 points and 6 rebounds 

Transylvania Men's Basketball's next game will be at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology on December 4th continuing their regular season conference matchups. 

Original source can be found here.