EMMITSBURG, Md. (Jan. 16, 2008) – Mount St. Mary's took control of the boards in using a 15-3 run to spark a 56-44 Northeast Conference victory over the Saint Francis men's basketball team on Wednesday night at Knott Arena.

Redshirt sophomore Devin Sweetney (Washington, DC /Riverdale Baptist) (Washington, D.C. / Riverdale Baptist) scored six straight Red Flash points to pull his team to within one point, 35-34, on a jumper with 13:07 to play.

Despite trailing 28-16 in rebounds at that point, the Mountaineers took over on the boards to pull away from SFU.

Mount St. Mary's pulled down 12 of the next 13 rebounds, and went on a 15-3 run over 8 minutes, 59 seconds to take an insurmountable 50-37 lead with 4:08 to play. Markus Mitchell scored six of his nine points during the stretch, while Sam Atupem had five of his nine points over that span.

Sweetney hit 10-of-11 free throw attempts on his way to a game-high 16 points, while junior Chris Berry (Seagoville, TX/Seagoville) (Seagoville, Texas / Seagoville) recorded his first double-double of the season (third career) with 15 points and 10 rebounds.

Chris Vann was the only player in double digits for the Mountaineers. He finished with 12 points, 5 rebounds and 3 steals.

The loss was the eighth straight for Saint Francis, which dropped to 3-14 overall, and 1-5 in the Northeast Conference. It wrapped up a three-game road swing. The Red Flash will return home to attempt to get back on the winning track with a three-game homestand, the longest of the season. SFU will face Robert Morris in a rematch from a game last month. The Red Flash won that game 75-66 in Moon Township.

Postgame Quotes

Head coach Bobby Jones

Coach, your impression on the game tonight:

“I think the glaring problem tonight was our inability to block out. We gave up a ton of offensive rebounds in both halves. I thought that it really got us in trouble in the first half. We were fortunate to go in at half only down by three points, because early on to start the basketball game they were able to get four or five offensive rebounds that led to us fouling, which gave them six points at half. Without that, we were probably going up four or five points. In the second half, I thought it was a glaring difference. Our inability to block out gave them opportunities to get offensive rebounds and put-backs, and that gave them the momentum to extend the lead. I thought rebounding was certainly the tell tale of this game tonight. We had 10 turnovers in the first half. I thought in the second half we did a little better job of taking care of the basketball. But when you are going against athletic people, we have to get bodies on people. We have to create space. It's not a jumping contest. We talked about it at the half, and I thought the second half that they really did the job on the boards. These are tough times to lose games like this because we certainly know why we are losing these games. But we have to do something about it. We have to work on it in practice, correct those things and we have to bring that kind of effort into the ballgame. I thought the rebounding certainly hurt us tonight.”

Did you guys struggle shooting the ball tonight, or was it Mount's defense?

“When teams turn up the defensive pressure and push your offense further out on the floor, you have a tendency to kind of lose your composure. I thought in the second half there was a stretch there where we didn't maintain our composure. We shot it a little too quick, the shots didn't go down. We were in a 51 defense, which is our two-three zone, and we get them to take the shot that we want and then we don't block out on the weak side and they get the rebound and put-back. Those are momentum builders for the other team, and they are certainly momentum killers for us. I thought that was the difference. We had 16 offensive rebounds, which is a good number, but in the first half we didn't convert. We had several shots blocked. I thought we controlled the tempo, and that's certainly something we talked about coming into tonight. We wanted to try to slow the game down a little bit. I thought we did a decent job with that, but we gave up way too many offensive rebounds that led to buckets for Mount St. Mary's.”