From University of Rochester Athletics
Every time New York University put on a charge, the University of Rochester men's basketball team had an answer, winning its fourth straight UAA contest by an 87-82 score on Sunday afternoon at the Hunter College Sportsplex.
25th-ranked Rochester (13-3, 4-1 UAA) was led by four players in double-figure scoring. Michael Mangan paced UR with season-best 17 points, adding four rebounds, while Ryan Clamage added 16 points with five rebounds and a career-high six assists. Both Jacob Wittig and Tucker Knoxeach scored 13 points for the Yellowjackets who also won their fourth straight game against the Violets (8-7, 1-4 UAA).
NYU's Ross Udine led all scorers with 21 points, also dishing out six assists. Dom Cristiano had a big game inside, scoring 18 points while grabbing 13 rebounds. Ethan Feldman scored 17 points and Jimmy Martinelli chipped in ten.
The Violets, playing their home games at nearby Hunter College in New York City due to renovations at the NYU Coles Sports Center, would build their largest lead of the game in the early going by pouding the ball inside, leading 16-10 following a Feldman 3-pointer and two free throws from Ted Georgiadis. 13 of those first 16 points for NYU were in the paint or free throws.
Rochester would then take away NYU's inside game over the next five minutes, forcing the Violets to settle for outside jumpers, eventually going on a 15-3 run to take the lead, 25-19 with eight minutes left in the half.
UR used a strong inside-out game during the stretch getting multiple layups with backdoor cuts and excellent passing from its post players. A Patrick Benka tip-in, plus an Andrew Lundstrom 3-pointer kickstarted the run, and then nine straight points after an NYU 3-pointer, with eight coming in the paint, finished it off.
Benka ended with six points and seven rebounds for the Yellowjackets, while Lundstrom had seven points and five boards off the bench.
NYU responded though, scoring eight straight points of its own, taking a 27-25 lead, with four different Violets scoring in that stretch.
Mangan then scored seven straight points all by himself to give UR the lead at 34-29 with under four to play in the half.
The Violets ended up re-tying the game at 38, but a late half run fueled by two Brendan O'Shea triples and two Wittig layups gave Rochester the 49-42 lead heading into intermission.
Rochester shot well in the opening half, making 62% of its attempts, but NYU was not that far behind, shooting at a 53% clip over the first 20 minutes.
An 8-0 run early in the second half gave UR its biggest lead of the game with 14:50 remaining, but the Violets refused to go away, trimming the lead to four on multiple occasions in the next few minutes.
But UR answered every NYU comeback with a surge of its own, holding the lead for the remainder of the contest. Knox provided a big spurt, scoring six straight points to put the visitors up 11 with just 1:53 remaining.
Overall for the game, UR shot 51% (32-63) from the floor, made 40% (6-15) from downtown and was 17-24 (71%) from the free throw line. NYU's totals were 49% (33-67), 16% (3-19), and 87% (13-15) respectively.
Rochester also had an edge in rebounding, pulling down 36 to 32 for NYU while handing out 17 assists to 12 for the Violets.