The men’s basketball team won a close game over the Army Black Knights by a score of 65-62 Wednesday night in Bender Arena. Senior forward Vlad Moldoveanu’s led the team with his second double-double of the season to help the Eagles escape with a narrow victory.
“It wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it,” said Head Coach Jeff Jones, who coached without shoes to bring awareness to the charity, Samaritan’s Feet. “It’s really, really hard in conference play to win and that was the case tonight.”
In the first half, AU tried to catch up to the consistently changing Black Knight offense, which had its largest lead of the night with a score of 29-22. Senior guard Nick Hendra led the comeback for the Eagles when they went on a 10-0 run. During this stretch, Hendra converted a free throw, grabbed a steal and scored on a breakaway dunk to give to Eagles the 32-29 advantage.
“It’s everybody’s job that I tried to sort of start the aggression and I just try to bring energy, but two points is two points,” Hendra said. “We did a good job down the stretch in crunch time, pulling it out.”
AU’s top two leading scorers stepped up to keep the game close. Moldoveanu and Stephen Lumpkins combined for 37 points and 20 rebounds in the ballgame. Army’s offense was unrelenting as Jeremy Hence and Ella Ellis unleashed a barrage of 3-pointers to cut the AU lead and eventually give Army a 58-56 lead with just under three minutes left in play. But AU guard Troy Brewer responded by hitting a 3-pointer of his own to put AU back on top by just a point.
“The biggest thing that we did was we rebounded the ball real well,” Jones said. “We were good enough from the free throw line, but down the stretch at least we were able to make enough of them. Being able to find a way to win is big, it’s a long haul.”
Moldoveanu converted at the line to seal the 65-62 win, shooting 5-7 from the foul line and scoring 17 of his team leading 21 points in the second half. The senior forward also grabbed 11 rebounds.
American outscored Army 28 to 16 in the paint and scored 15 points off 11 Black Knight turnovers.
“They were a very good team, they played me and Lumpkins the same way like every other team plays us,” Moldoveanu said. “We try to be aggressive, [but] we got to play better. It’s not about me or Lumpkins or [Hendra], it’s about all of us.”
The Eagles’ next Patriot League opponent will be the College of the Holy Cross this Saturday at 2 p.m.
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