Despite losing an 18-point first half lead, the Canisius Golden Griffins were able to hang on to defeat the Quinnipiac Bobcats 86-74 in a matchup of two of the top teams in the MAAC.

“We knew it was going to be a battle coming in here, I mean they really felt they were one of the hottest teams in the league,” Canisius coach Jim Baron said.

Canisius (15-7, 9-2 MAAC) opened the game on an 8-0 run, followed by a 7-0 run to build an 18-6 lead just 7:30 into the first half.  With 8:19 to play in the first half, the Golden Griffins’ lead ballooned to 18 points at 31-13.

“In hindsight, you look at the whole totality of the game you can’t spot a team this good 18 points and say lets play 30 minutes instead of 40,” Quinnipiac coach Tom Moore said. “It really hampers your chances of winning.”

The Bobcats (12-8, 7-4 MAAC) chipped away at the Golden Griffins’ lead before closing the first half on a 8-0 run and trail by nine points at halftime.

Quinnipiac cut Canisius’ lead to just two points after a steal by Evan Conti and dish to Ousmane Drame for a dunk to make it 48-46 Canisius with 13:08 remaining in the second half, but Jim Baron called a timeout and the Bobcats could not keep up after the pause in action.

“I felt good at halftime, I really did,” Moore said. “I told our guys we cut an 18-point lead when we were dead in the water down to nine at halftime. I wasn’t surprised we got it to two. Everything was going to that point where I thought it would continue to go. I think you’ve got to take a step back at that point and understand how good [Canisius] is too.”

Billy Baron stepped into a 3-pointer with Conti giving room out of the timeout to spark a 7-0 run. They maintained at least a seven-point lead for the remainder of the game.

“We just want to keep our composure, we’ve got a lot of young kids on this team but I thought our seniors stepped up,” Jim Baron said. “We got in a little bit of foul trouble and so did they but I thought our guys kept their composure and played for 40 minutes and we’re going to need to do that.”

Zaid Hearst said after the game there was one reason the Bobcats could not complete the comeback.

“We just couldn’t get a stop, we couldn’t get a stop,” Hearst said. “We were right there, we were close because we needed a stop, we just couldn’t get it.”

Another point of emphasis was the rebounding margin, as Canisius was able to tie the Bobcats on the boards with 38 each.

“I felt like we got a lot of good shots, rushed a few,” Hearst said. “I mean the rebounding margin was even, if shots don’t fall we rely on our rebounding and our defense, we just couldn’t pull it out.”

Hearst led all scorers with a career-high 33 points, as well as pulling down six rebounds and recording four assists. Moore praised Hearst after the game due to his offensive performance while having to guard Canisius’ standout Billy Baron.

“[Baron’s] a great player but a tribute to Zaid Hearst and James Ford was on him, they worked like crazy to try to deny him and stay solid on him,” Moore said. “I don’t know how [Hearst] was able to do that and still score 33 points on the other end, just a tribute again to how tough he is.”

Billy Baron scored 20 points to lead the Golden Griffins despite not scoring until about nine minutes into each half of the game. He was critical at the free-throw line going 8-9.

“I love guarding the best player, night in and night out I try to stick with the best player because I know my team relies on me on defense,” Hearst said.

Two other players scored in double figures for Canisius as Zach Lewis scored 17 points, including 14 in the first half, and Chris Perez chipped in 15 with five assists.

Conti came up big for the Bobcats to spark rallies several times for the Bobcats, leading to an 11 point; eight assist performance in the loss.

“The kid is like incredibly resilient, incredibly tough and he comes to practice, he comes to every game with emotion and energy to really try and get us a win any way he can,” Moore said.

Canisius outshot Quinnipiac 51.8 percent to 37.1 percent despite a better second half performance for the Bobcats.

“I thought emotionally we were ready to play, we just got outplayed,” Moore said. “We got flat-out outplayed.”