BRYANT CAN’T HOLD ONTO HALFTIME LEAD, FALLS TO MONMOUTH ON THE ROAD, 66-57, MONDAY NIGHT

WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. – Monmouth used a 20-point second-half swing to erase the Bulldogs' best half of the 2010-11 campaign Monday night, making up an 11-point halftime deficit to take a 66-57 victory over the Bryant University men's basketball team to open 2011 Northeast Conference action.

The Bulldogs (2-12, 0-2 Northeast Conference) led by as many as 17 points late in the first half, but struggled on both ends of the court in the final frame as the Hawks (5-9, 1-1) shot 50 percent in the final 20 minutes, outscoring Bryant, 49-29.

Freshman Alex Francis (Harlem, N.Y.) and sophomore Frankie Dobbs (Berea, Ohio) paced the Bulldogs with 15 points apiece, while Vlad Kondratyev (Nikolayev, Ukraine) pulled in a season-best 10 rebounds. Jordan Davis recorded a double-double for the home side with 12 points and a game-high 13 boards.

Bryant shot just 37.9 percent in both halves, but that was enough to take an 11-point advantage into the halftime break, holding its opponent to only 17 first-half points, a season low for the Bulldogs. But the low-scoring affair was evident early on, after a pair of Francis baskets marked the only points in the first 4:05 of the game and the teams went a combined 3-for-15 through the first media timeout at the 15:10 mark.

But Bryant would come back out of the short break on a tear that would last nearly the entire half, taking a 12-3 advantage with 12:22 to play in the frame after a Matthew Lee (Bloomfield, N.J.) 3-pointer. The Bulldogs forced turnovers on the host Hawks all session long – Monmouth would enter the break having given the ball away a whopping 13 times – and Bryant capitalized on the mistakes with 16 first-half points off Monmouth miscues.

Dobbs served up the perfect pass at the 9:11 mark as Francis threw down a dunk that rocked the court, giving the visitors a 15-point lead, 17-6. The Bulldogs would maintain a 22-10 edge with just over six minutes to play to force MU head coach Dave Calloway to call his team's second timeout of the frame.

Dobbs would draw a charge on Hawk guard Jesse Steele on a breakaway with 4:42 to play in the frame, and Bryant held Monmouth to just 10 points through the opening 12:21 of the outing. But the home side would take back some of the momentum in the final minutes, going on a 7-1 run over the final 3:10 to close out the half.

Still, with a 28-17 halftime advantage – just the third lead at the intermission for the Bulldogs this season – the Black and Gold entered the locker room having put up arguably its best 20 minutes of the 2010-11 campaign.

But the break took some of the fire out of the Bulldogs, who allowed Monmouth to open up the second frame on a 21-8 run not just to pull even, but to surpass the Black and Gold, 38-36, on a Steele trey at the 10:24 mark.

Kondratyev would power through the paint with 8:43 on the clock, breaking a more than five-minute Bulldog scoreless streak to knot the game at 38-38. But it wouldn't stop the now-hot Hawks, who started up another run, this one 16-6 that took the teams all the way to the two-minute mark for a 54-44 Monmouth lead.

Bryant scored more than half of its second-half points (15-of-29) in the final 2:01 – led by 10 from Dobbs in the final 88 seconds – but the Hawks would go 12-of-14 from the free throw line down the stretch to keep pace for the 66-57 final.

The Bulldogs return to action later this week, when they return home to host a pair of Northeast Conference matchups at the Chace Athletic Center, starting with a faceoff against Long Island Thursday at 7 p.m.