Box Score | RPI Athletics Fanshop

TROY, N.Y. - The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) men's basketball team jumped out to a big lead early and the Engineers put five student-athletes in double figures in defeating The Sage Colleges, 76-51, in a non-league game at East Campus Arena. RPI improves to 2-1 with the victory, while the Gators drop to 1-3.

The Engineers scored 10 of the first 15 points over the course of six minutes and then went on a 12-6 run for a 16-point lead (27-11) with 7:30 to play in the first half. The margin got to be as many as 23 points, 40-17, with 1:21 to play and Rensselaer was never tested. RPI connected on 16 of 32 shots (50%) in the first half while holding Sage to just 22.6% (7 of 31) for a 43-21 lead at the break. Senior Tom Horvat had 10 first half points, while Jeffrey Coulter scored nine and Patrick Mahoney tallied eight.

Coulter went on to lead all scorers with 15 points on 5 of 7 shooting from three-point range. Horvat had 13 points and Mahoney added a dozen. Andreas Kontopidis and Marcus Giese both scored 11 points with Giese also pulling down a game-high nine points with three assists, two steals and four blocked shots. Coulter had six rebounds of his own and Kontopidis collected four assists.

For Sage, Christian Larson scored 10 points, while Joshua Gonzalez had nine with seven rebounds. Anthony Mitchell had a team-high eight caroms for the Gators, who shot just 23.8% (15 of 63) from the field, though they did make 72.7% (16 of 22) of their free throws.

Sage is idle until November 27 when the Gators host Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts at 7pm at Kahl Gymnasium. RPI is back on the court this weekend in the University of Rochester's Holiday Inn Downtown Rochester Tournament. The Engineers face Montclair State on Saturday at 7pm.