Bulldogs win season-finale thriller over Blackbirds, 88-83, Saturday in Brooklyn

BROOKLYN, N.Y. – The Bryant University men's basketball team grabbed its first lead with just under 12 minutes to play in the first half and held onto that edge for the remainder of the game, winning a wild one, 88-83, over LIU Brooklyn in Saturday's Northeast Conference regular-season finale.

Frosh Nisre Zouzoua (Brockton Mass.) led the Bulldogs (8-23, 5-13 NEC) and paced all performers on the stat sheet with a career-high 29 points on a career-best seven triples (7-11). Rookie forward Marcel Pettway (North Providence, R.I.) netted 19 points on 9-of-11 shooting, while Gus Riley (Nelson, New Zealand) was a spark off the bench for the second-straight game with 16 points, 14 of which came in the first half. Senior captain Shane McLaughlin (Old Tappan, N.J.) flirted with a triple-double in his final game donning the Black and Gold colors with 12 points all in the second frame, 12 assists and a team-best eight caroms.

Jerome Frink charged the Blackbirds (15-14, 9-9) with 23 points and a game-high 11 rebounds, as Martin Hermannsson nearly charted his own triple-double with 20 points, eight helpers and nine boards. Joel Hernandez poured in 14 points to go along with seven rebounds, and Aakim Saintil added 11 points and seven dimes.

The Bulldogs shot a blazing 61 percent from the floor (32-52) and 56 percent from beyond the arc (14-25), connecting on over 60 percent of their shots from both locations in the first half. The Blackbirds were held to under 30 percent from the field and long range in the opening stanza, before finishing with clips of .370 from the floor (27-73) and .273 from distance (9-33).

The Blackbirds grabbed what ended up being their largest lead of the game, 12-7, 4:30 into the contest. But the Bulldogs retaliated with an 11-2 run over the ensuing 3:26 to attain an 18-14 lead with 11 minutes to play in the first half.

The Black and Gold led by no more than four over the next 4:12, until a Curtis Oakley Jr. (South Euclid, Ohio) trey became the catalyst of four-straight makes from beyond the arc to give the visitors a 36-22 lead at the 5:09 mark.

The double-digit margin was short-lived, as the Blackbirds responded with a 10-0 run over the ensuing three minutes to get themselves right back into the action, 36-32. But Bryant closed out the half with a 7-0 stretch capped off by Zouzoua's fourth trey to regain the double-figure gap, 43-32.

The Black and Gold converted 9-of-15 from deep in the first half, and the hot shooting continued in the second, as the Bulldogs went 13-of-19 from the floor over the first 12 minutes. The Blackbirds refused to get put away by going 13-of-21 from the field to trail by no more than 16 during the span.

With under seven minutes to play, the Bulldogs had held onto a double-digit lead for over 13 minutes and looked to be on their way to an easy win. But a Nura Zanna layup at the 6:53 sparked a 14-4 host run over the next 4:05 to bring the Blackbirds to within just three points, 78-75.   

Fouls became the source of scoring during that 14-4 stretch, as a total of 10 free throws were made. The ensuing two minutes from the 3:51 mark to the 1:52 mark were no different with each side sinking three freebies apiece to keep the Bulldogs on top, 81-78.

Following a Frink make at the line that cut the visitor deficit to three points, McLaughlin drove hard to the rack and banked in a contested layup while absorbing the body of a defender to give Bryant a two-possession edge, 83-78, with 1:20 to play.

Hernandez splashed in a trey on the other end to make it 83-81, which was the closest it had been since the 6:52 mark of the first frame. The Blackbirds tacked on two more points from the line, while the Bulldogs added three with the last make coming from Oakley Jr. to make it 86-83 with just 21 seconds remaining.  

Trevin Woods and Hermannsson hoisted up quality looks in the final LIU possession, but both attempts came up short, and junior forward Andrew Scocca (Melrose, Mass.) grabbed the board with three seconds to go. Scocca immediately got fouled and he drained two huge free throws to ice the win for Bryant.

The win ends the Bulldogs' 12-game losing streak, and Zouzoua's 29 points and seven triples were both season highs for Bryant this year. Zouzoua's seven threes makes him the first Bulldog since Dyami Starks ('15) (Nov. 30, 2014) to hit at least seven in a game.

The 88 points matched a season high for Bryant and the 14 made treys were not only a season best, but they were just three shy of matching the program's all-time mark of 17. The .615 clip from the floor was also a season-best for the Bulldogs.