TORONTO – The Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold men's basketball squad abandoned a 13-point halftime lead and were unable to recover in a frustrating 76-72 defeat to the McMaster Marauders on Saturday.
The Marauders turned on the jets in the third quarter to stun a Bold side that had their offense in cruise control throughout the opening two frames. The visitors tacked on 20 points to TMU's eight in the third quarter alone, well before McMaster's Mike Demagus closed out the contest by nailing four-straight free throws to mitigate a pair of clutch shots from Aaron Rhooms.
The fourth-year guard paced the Bold with 28 points but failed to find any teammate of his come anywhere close to matching his offensive output in the loss. Demangus and Brendan Amoyaw led the Marauders' upset with 14 points each, the former going 10-13 from the line.
"We need more help from guys to score," said head coach of the Bold David DeAveiro following the loss. "We just don't have that luxury on the bench right now," he added. The Bold lost a major component of their bench in Jahcobi Neath, who left midway through the game with an injury.
Despite failing to make any headway from beyond the arc through two quarters of action, the Bold dominated the paint–shooting 47.4 percent from the field in each of the first two frames–to take a commanding 13-point lead into the break.
Buoyed by a 17-point showing from Rhooms, the home side rallied around a 10-3 and 10-4 run in the first and second quarter respectively to inflict their damage on the Hamilton side.
Riaz Saliu helped the Marauders stop the bleeding to open up the third quarter, outsourcing all the contents of his side's 6-2 run to begin carving into TMU's sizeable lead.
Slowly the Marauders began to pick up steam, landing three-straight layups in under a minute to cut their deficit to eight and following that up with a 13-3 run to pull even with the Bold in the final seconds of the third quarter.
"They cranked up their defense and got more physical and more athletic and got into our space," said DeAveiro. "We weren't able to run any offense because of their physicality and their quickness," he added.
The Bold failed to do themselves any favours on the defensive side of the ball to keep the Marauders out of reach, turning the ball over a game-high 10 times in the frame and allowing the visitors to score 13 points from their mistakes.
Heading into the fourth knotted up at 54 apiece, the Bold were still unable to throw a wrench into McMaster's momentum and quickly found themselves on the wrong side of an 8-1 run to trail 67-62.
The Bold crawled their way back to even the game up at 69 through a clutch jumper from Rhooms but watched as McMaster's Tyler Garcia recovered his side's lead with a three-pointer 20 seconds later.
Rhooms found the net once more to tie the game back up at 72 but could not thread the needle on a third, with his final shot attempt banking off the Marauders' rim to damper TMU's final possession of the evening.
The Bold will look to quickly put Saturday's defeat behind them as they head to Brock with their eyes set on picking up some ground on the team that sits ahead of them in the OUA Central. Tip off is set for 8 p.m.
