Saint Francis University Athletics

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
>> Redshirt junior Josh Cohen (Lincroft, N.J.) became the second player in program history to register multiple 40-point performances in a single-season and/or career in Honolulu, Hawai'I on Sunday night. Cohen also narrowly missed his third-straight double-double after finishing with nine rebounds.
>> A player has reached 40 points in a game for the Red Flash 13 times, but only Cohen and Saint Francis legend and NBA Hall of Famer Maurice Stokes have had multiple 40-point games. Stokes did it four times in the 1954-55 season.
>> Cohen tied the SimpiFi Arena at Sherriff Center mark with 16 made field goals in a game and missed the arena point mark by just one point. The redshirt junior also had 40 points and nine boards against Lehigh on November 21 in Loretto and just missed the DeGol Arena standard by two points.
>> Saint Francis lost to the University of Hawai'I 90-66 in non-conference men's basketball action.

TURNING POINT OF THE GAME
The Rainbow Warriors closed the first half by scoring the final five points to take a 37-36 lead going into the locker room. Saint Francis kept the margin to single digits until Hawai'I went on a 14-4 run midway through the final frame and the Red Flash could not get any closer the rest of the way.

FLASH QUOTES
"We have got to find a way to play tough for 40 minutes. It becomes challenging to win a basketball game especially in their own arena when they get second opportunities at the basket puts us in a tough spot. I do not think we did a good job defensively for the second 20 minutes. For forty minutes we need to find a way to get stops, get rebounds and commit to what we were doing in the first half. I'm certainly proud of the way that Josh played, but I know that he would rather have a different experience than scoring all those points and coming out with the loss." – head coach Rob Krimmel on the game
 
FLASH MOMENTS
With the score tied at 5, Saint Francis went on a 13-7 spurt to take an 18-12 lead with 13:09 left in the first half. Cohen had eight of the 13 points in the run.
 
The Loretto program scored five unanswered points to erase a 30-29 deficit and take a 34-30 advantage with 3:51 left in the stanza. Cohen started the spurt with a turnaround jumper at 4:53 before Landon Moore (Bloomington, Ill.) nailed a 3-pointer at 3:51. After a Rainbow Warriors basket, Cohen notched found the inside of the cylinder at 2:20 to restore a four-point lead and finish the first half with 21 points.

FLASH NUGGETS
There have been six players in NCAA Division I that have registered a 40-point game in 2022-23, but Cohen is the only one that has turned the trick more than once. It was the fourth time in program history that a player posted 40 points on the road and the first since Lamont Harris reached 40 points against LIU on January 18, 1986. Stokes had three 40-point games in the final 11 games of the 1954-55 season, including three in a five-game span and back-to-back home games. The Saint Francis Hall of Famer registered three of these 40-point output at home with his 43 points in overtime against Dayton in the NIT taking place at Madison Square Garden for his lone road 40-point game.
 
Cohen is the first Northeast Conference player to post a pair of 40-point games in the same season since Rob Monroe scored 41 points against Longwood on January 2, 2005 and 40 points against Sacred Heart on February 3, 2005 for Quinnipiac. The 2004-05 season was also the last time a Saint Francis player scored 35 points or more when Darshan Luckey had 39 points at Mount St. Mary's.
 
In three games in the month of December, Cohen is averaging 24.0 points and 10.3 rebounds per game. The redshirt senior narrowly missed becoming the first Red Flash player to register three-straight double-doubles since Keith Braxton in the 2019-20 season. Along with setting a career-high for field goals made and tying his career-best point total, Cohen tied his career-high with three blocks.
 
Moore finished with eight points, three rebounds and two assists, while Cam Gregory (Accokeek, Md.) added five points, four rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block. It was the first time the team only had one scorer in double figures for the first time since at Virginia Tech on November 23, 2021.
 
Saint Francis played a team from Hawai'I for the first time since the 1975-76 season and for the fourth time in team history.

NEXT TIME OUT
The Red Flash returns to the East Coast and heads to the University of Miami on Saturday. Game time is 12 p.m.