BEVERLY, Mass. – A big second half rally helped Endicott College rally from an eight point halftime deficit to defeat the MIT men's basketball team, 71-62, in non-conference play on Wednesday night at MacDonald Gymnasium.
Marcus Montagnino scored a game-high 24 points while pulling down 11 rebounds and adding five assists to lead the Gulls to a third straight victory to open the season. Sophomore guard Jackson Weiland scored 13 points to lead MIT while Mike Ewing finished as one of four Engineers with nine points to go along with a team-high eight rebounds.
THE BASICS:
- Score: Endicott 71, MIT 62
- Records: Endicott 3-0 Overall, MIT 1-1 Overall
HOW IT HAPPENED:
- Geared by a pair of early Endicott turnovers, MIT opened the game on a 15-0 run that was capped by a layup from Merlin Gogolin at 14:41.
- Endicott countered with a 9-0 run of its own, cutting the deficit back to six with 11:17 left in the first.
- The Engineers held the lead throughout the first half, extending their advantage back to nine points after Michael Zhang hit a triple at the four-minute mark.
- The guests would eventually take a 36-28 lead into halftime after Weiland beat the buzzer with a jumper in the paint.
- MIT would lead by as many as 11 points in the early going of the second half, as a three-pointer from Isaac Dobie gave the Engineers a 45-34 lead at 17:14. However, Endicott started to slowly chip away at the MIT advantage.
- Endicott put together an 9-0 run following Dobie's triple, pulling within two points for the first time since the opening seconds of the game when Matt Boen dropped in a layup at 13:03 to make the score 45-43.
- Wyatt Mowery snapped the Endicott run with a layup at 12:22 but Endicott countered with an AJ Forte three that cut the score to one, at 47-46. Endicott took its first lead of the day on its next possession, moving ahead 48-47 thanks to a jumper in the paint from Montagnino at 11:13.
- MIT did not regain the lead for the remainder of the contest. Endicott pushed its edge to seven points before MIT countered, trimming the deficit back to one with just over three minutes left in the contest when Rome Delgado-Gonzalez knocked down a three-pointer.
- Delgado-Gonzalez's three was met with an 11-0 Endicott run, as the Gulls would lead by as many as 12 points in the game's final minute before closing out the nine-point win, 71-62.
INSIDE THE NUMBERS:
- Delgado-Gonzalez had seven rebounds to go along with his nine points.
- The Gulls had a huge advantage at the free throw line, knocking down 22-of-29 while MIT was just 5-of-7 in the game.
- The Engineers finished the game shooting 38.5% from the field while Endicott wasn't much better, shooting 39.7% of its shots.
- Endicott had the advantage in points off turnovers, scoring 16 on 13 MIT turnovers while limiting MIT to just five points off of only seven turnovers.
- Zhang was 3-for-4 from three-point range from MIT, scoring nine points in the game. Zhang hit three of the team's seven three pointers in the game.
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