For the first time in 2024, the Quinnipiac men’s basketball team found itself on the wrong end of a final score. The Bobcats fell on the road to Mount St. Mary’s 96-79 Saturday afternoon, Quinnipiac’s first loss since Dec. 30 of last year.
Quinnipiac went down early, as the hosts opened the game up 8-0. However, freshman forward Rihards Vavers kept the Bobcats in the game, scoring eight of the teams’ first 11 points.
Besides Vavers, the rest of the Bobcats weren’t much help on the offensive end. To make matters worse, senior center Paul Otieno picked up his second foul less than 10 minutes into the contest, forcing him to the sideline.
With Otieno on the bench, Quinnipiac head coach Tom Pecora opted to go small, sending sophomore forward Amarri Tice to the center position.
In addition, graduate student forward Matt Balanc started to catch fire midway through the first, knocking down two highly-contested jumpers. But the hosts matched almost every single bucket, shooting 61.5% from beyond the arc in the first frame.
Senior forward Joshua Reaves tortured the Bobcat defense in the first half for 17 points on just nine shots. The visitors did almost everything to stop the Hamden native, but Reaves hit tough shots and got to the rim fairly easily.
Despite Mount’s hot shooting, Quinnipiac made a nice run to end the half, cutting the deficit down to just one at the break.
Tice put Quinnipiac ahead for the first time two minutes into the second, somehow getting a seemingly-impossible layup to fall, all while getting fouled in the process.
From that point on, it was all Mount St. Mary’s. The Mountaineers shot 18-28 from the field in the second half and as the Bobcats failed to get stops, the hosts’ lead ballooned to nine midway through the half.
Once Quinnipiac did get stops, the visitors couldn’t get it going on the offensive end. At one point, the Bobcats had missed 12 of their last 13 shots. The Mountaineers took full advantage, pushing the lead to 19.
An 8-0 run for Quinnipiac got the deficit down to 10, but the hosts closed out the Bobcats and snapped their 10-game winning streak.
Despite the loss, the Bobcats remain in first place in the MAAC, as their 11-2 record tops all conference teams. 8
Quinnipiac returns home to play Niagara on Feb. 18 for Alumni Day. Tip off is set for 2 p.m.
