Dean falls to St. Joseph’s College of Maine 82-72, its seventh loss in a row. (Photo Courtesy: Deanbulldogs.com).
The Dean College Men’s Basketball team fell to St. Joseph’s College of Maine 82-73 in an empty Pieri Gymnasium on Saturday afternoon.
Dean had a tough time stopping senior guard Nicholas Curtis as he finished the game with 29 points, leading in the scoring category for the Monks.
Junior Mark Blair led the Bulldogs in scoring with 19 points and 12 rebounds as he recorded his eighth double-double of the season.
The game was tight early until the Monks took a 25-14 lead with 7:50 left in the first half when Curtis first started getting hot and hit three straight baskets. However, the Bulldogs fought back and stayed close with St Joseph’s in the first half until Dean went on a 10-0 run, which was capped off by senior Nick Sampeck hitting a three pointer to give Dean a 38-34 lead just before halftime. Curtis answered back for the Monks as he hit a running three pointer at the buzzer to cut the Bulldog’s lead to one at halftime.
In the second half, Dean got sloppy as St Joseph’s got hot shooting the ball. The Bulldogs had a total of 23 turnovers, with 12 of them in the second half. While Dean had a lot of their points come in the paint (42), they also went ice cold from downtown as they shot 0-7 from three-point range in the second half. On the other end, the Monks shot 50% from three-point land in the second half, and Curtis shot an astounding 69% from the field for the game for St Joseph’s.
“Coach liked the way our 2-3 was looking against them so he decided to play more zone in the second half. With a team full of shooters like that, it is important to run them off the line and make them drivers instead of shooters,” senior guard Winston Bryan told me after the game.
“There’s nothing more to be said about what we can do as a unit. We just need to buckle down and get it done. At this point it’s about grit, heart, wanting it more than your opponent, executing the game plan and playing a full 40 minutes of good basketball. In my opinion there’s not one team we’ve lost to that I felt was more talented than we are; they were just more disciplined in the long run and that’s why we’re losing games,” Bryan went on to explain after the game.
“Our team did not play hard enough in the second half to put us in position to be victorious,” Dean head coach Joe Cabral told me after the game.
“On Monday, we need to play harder and commit to our game plan of being unselfish and team oriented,” Cabral went on to mention.
St Joseph’s improves to 4-13 overall and 3-6 in conference play. The Monks will be back in action on Wednesday night when they will play on the road at Colby-Swayer at 7:30pm. The Bulldogs fall to 5-8 overall and 0-6 in conference play. Dean will be back in action Monday night when they will also be on the road playing Anna Maria in a makeup game at 7pm when they will look to snap a seven-game losing streak.
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