Four Bulldogs reach double-figures in Thursday’s 79-72 loss to Terriers in Brooklyn Heights

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, N.Y. – The Bryant University men's basketball team led for most of the first frame, but were outscored, 16-3, to start the second and could not tie the game or grab a lead after falling behind by 11, ultimately dropping Thursday night's Northeast Conference tilt to St. Francis Brooklyn, 79-72.

Freshman Nisre Zouzoua (Brockton, Mass.) led the Bulldogs on the stat sheet (7-23, 4-13 NEC) for a fifth-straight contest with 23 points, matching a career-best five treys (5-9). He was one of four Bulldogs to net double-figures, as frosh Marcel Pettway (North Providence, R.I.) scored 17 points and grabbed eight rebounds, sophomore Hunter Ware (Powder Springs, Ga.) poured in 14 points to go along with four assists, five boards and three steals, and sophomore Gus Riley (Nelson, New Zealand) added 11 points in 14 minutes off the bench.

Antonio Jenifer charged the Terriers (14-16, 10-7) with 24 points, 18 coming in the second frame, and a contest-best 11 boards. Yunus Hopkinson poured in all 17 of his points in the second half, and Chris Hooper tallied 15 points and six caroms. Amdy Fall only charted six points and five rebounds, but he also rejected eight shots in the win.

The Bulldogs shot 40 percent from the floor (26-65) and 31.8 percent (7-22) from long range. The Terriers converted just 33 percent of their shots from the field in the first half and 7.7 percent from beyond the arc (1-13), but recorded clips of .567 and .308 from those distances, respectively, in the second stanza. St. Francis went 22-of-27 from the line compared to a 13-of-18 performance for Bryant.

The Bulldogs jumped out to an 8-0 lead to start the contest and led by as many as nine points in the opening frame before taking a 29-27 edge into halftime.

The script completely flipped in the second stanza, as the Terriers jumped out to an 11-point lead behind a 16-3 run over the initial four minutes, with Hopkinson and Jenifer combining for 13 points in that stretch.

The lead dropped no lower than seven over the next five minutes, but triples from Riley and Zouzoua capped off a 10-2 Bulldog run over a 2:19 stretch to bring them to within two, 53-51, with nine minutes in the frame.

The Bulldogs cut it to one, 62-61, following four-straight makes at the line from Riley, but both the hosts and the visitors matched one another with 21 points apiece, shooting 6-of-12 and 6-of-15 from the floor, respectively, over a 8:28 span.

Zouzoua drained his fifth trey of the night at the tail end of wild possession that was set up by a Justin Brickman (San Antonio, Texas) strip of Hopkinson after a Ware miss. It brought the game to two points for the final time, 74-72, with 32 ticks on the clock, as five makes at the line over the final 30 seconds sealed the seven point victory for the Terriers.  

The Black and Gold conclude their 2015-16 season on Saturday afternoon at LIU Brooklyn. The matchup with the Blackbirds is set to tip off at 4:00 p.m.