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ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. - The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) men's basketball team built a 22-point lead on the strength of an incredible defensive first half, then hung on down the stretch to defeat Bard College, 56-48, in a Liberty League game on Tuesday night.
The victory snapped a four-game losing streak for the Engineers, who improved to 11-10 overall, 5-7 in the Liberty League. Bard fell to 2-17, 0-10.
RPI scored the first nine points of the game and held Bard without a field goal for the first nine-plus minutes of the contest. Although the Engineers weren't having a great shooting night themselves, 34 percent from the field in the first half was plenty against Bard's 11 percent (3-for-27), and it was 26-12 in favor of RPI at halftime.
RPI scored the first eight points of the second half and the lead got as big as 22 before the Raptors woke up. A late 20-5 run, culminating with a three-pointer by Emmanuel Oyakhilome (Lindenhurst, NY), trimmed the deficit to 53-48 with 88 seconds to go. But the Engineers forced a tough jumper and created a turnover on Bard's final two possessions, and
Jonathan Luster (Essex, CT) made 3-of-4 from the foul line in the last 25 seconds to close it out.
Andreas Kontopidis led RPI with 14 points and nine rebounds;
Brian Hatcher added 14 points and eight rebounds. Luster finished with 11 points and five assists.
Bard got 14 points from Chris Lockwood (Los Angeles, CA) and 11 points from Harry Johnson (Smyrna, DE).
Up next for RPI is a Liberty League game at Union a week from Friday night at 8.
