Lightning Men’s Basketball Falls 76-64 at Kutztown

KUTZTOWN, Pa. – The Goldey-Beacom College men’s basketball team could not avenge last year’s buzzer-beater loss to Kutztown on its home floor last year as the Golden Bears led from wire-to-wire and handed the Lightning a 76-64 loss in non-league play at the Keystone Arena Tues. night.

The Lightning fall to 1-3 on the season with the loss and are 0-2 in the series with their newly found Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference rival, Kutztown. The Golden Bears, meanwhile, improved to 3-1 on the year.

Senior guard/forward Sam McDuffie led the Lightning with 16 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the field and 8-of-10 from the foul line. Senior forward Terrence Parkes flirted with his third double-double as he scored 13 and pulled down nine rebounds.

Graduate student forward Rich Flemming pulled down a team-high 10 rebounds and scored seven while freshman guard A.J. Picard notched his first double-figure scoring game of his young Lightning career with 10 points and also pitched in a team-high three steals.

Moving up in the school record books was senior guard Azeez Ellegood, who pitched in eight points on two three-point field goals and two free-throws and dished out a game-high six assists. With those six assists, he surpassed Jeremy Jenne (’06) for second on the school’s all-time career assists list with 247. He also is now one three-point field goal shy of tying the school’s all-time career leader, Nate Lewis. Ellegood has made 121 three-pointers in his career.

Kutztown, playing in its season home-opener at Keystone Arena, was led by its 6-foot-6 senior forward Tamir Johnson, who torched GBC with career-highs of 24 points (8-for-13 FG) and 18 rebounds. Johnson’s 18 rebounds was the most by a Lightning opposing player since former Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference foe New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Desmond Cowins pulled down 19 rebounds in a victory over GBC on Feb. 26, 2004. KU’s sophomore forward Eric Brennan racked up 20 points and seven rebounds as well.

The Golden Bears scored the game’s first seven points and never looked back. GBC did not get on the board until a Flemming layup nearly three minutes into the action, but Kutztown followed with the game’s next five points to take a 13-2 lead five-and-a-half minutes in.

Trailing 19-9, the Lightning scored 13 of the game’s next 19 points to close the lead to four. Picard, who scored nine of his 10 points in the first half, scored five consecutive points on a three-ball and a layup to begin the mini-Lightning surge.

After a Brennan jumper increased the Kutztown lead back to six, McDuffie drove to the basket for the layup and the foul and converted the free-throw for the conventional three-point play to cut the lead to three (25-22) with 5:43 left in the first half.

But it was all Golden Bears from there, as Kutztown closed out the half on a 15-4 run, taking a comfortable, 40-26 lead into the intermission.

Only once in the second half were the Lightning able to close within single-digits and that came at the 15:40 mark when McDuffie made one-of-two at the foul line to make the score 43-34. From there, Kutztown went on a 6-0 spurt and never let the lead under 10 from that point on.

Kutztown shot far better from the field (55%-38%) and from three-point range (3-of-6 to 6-of-24) while also dominating the glass, 43-29.