UNION, N.J. (1/22/2020) – Kendall Blount scored a career-high 20 points as the Kean University men's basketball team had their second half comeback thwarted by New Jersey City University with a 88-84 loss on Wednesday evening.
Jaimik Moore finished with 16 points and three assists for the Gothic Knights who improve to 8-9 overall and 5-5 in the New Jersey Athletic Conference.
Nate Lyles finished with 17 points and six rebounds for the Cougars who fall to 4-13 overall and 1-9 in the NJAC.
Kean opened the contest on a 6-0 run and held NJCU scoreless for the first four minutes. The Gothic Knights made back-to-back layups to cut the Cougar lead in half at 6-4 with 14:56 remaining. Jersey City eventually tied the game at 8-8 with a steal and breakaway layup with 13:42 remaining in the first half.
The Gothic Knights pushed their lead to double-digits at 26-13 with a 20-5 run during a 5:27 span. NJCU increased their lead to the largest of the half at 41-23 with 3:16 remaining. Kean closed out the opening stanza with a 9-5 run that included five points from Blount. Kean trailed 43-32 at halftime, despite shooting 53.6% from the floor, compared to 52.8% for Jersey City.
Blount opened the Cougars second half scoring with back-to-back buckets, including a triple from the corner to bring the halftime lead down to 45-37 with 18:31 remaining.
Jersey City responded with a 15-8 run to push the lead back to 62-45 with 13:40 remaining. After NJCU expanded their lead to 71-51, Kean used a 33-17 run to cut the Jersey City lead down to 85-84 with 54 seconds remaining.
Jared Latane and Lyles combined for 21 of the 33 points during the run.
NJCU made a key layup and a free throw to seal the game for the Gothic Knights in the final 54 seconds.
Jailen Jamison finished with 13 points, seven rebounds and three assists, while Latane tallied 16 points and
Myles Owens totaled 10 points.
Head Coach
Adam Hutchinson and the Cougars will return to action on Saturday, Jan. 25
th, hosting the Red Hawks of Montclair State University at 1:00 p.m.
