The Quinnipiac men’s basketball team snapped a four-game losing streak as they defeated Saint Peter’s by a score of 56-55 on Thursday evening at TD Bank Sports Center, halting the Peacocks four-game winning streak in the process.
Quinnipiac (9-17, 6-11 MAAC) came out of the gate with a slow start. Saint Peter’s (12-14, 10-7 MAAC) started the game on a 17-5 run, maintaining control of the first half.
Quadir Welton finished the half with 12 points and six rebounds for the Peacocks and dominated the Bobcats in the paint.
Welton’s opportunities were a result of the Bobcats focusing on another Peacock player, Antwon Portley. Portley dropped 25 points on the Bobcats in their last matchup on Feb. 8.
Quinnipiac senior guard James Ford addressed the task of defending Portley.
“This game I was determined, as well as my teammates, to shut him down and keep him quiet for the rest of the game to let everybody else dictate how they win… because they have to go their second option,” Ford said. “(Portley) wasn’t hitting shots and (Trevis) Wyche wasn’t hitting shots so it pushed them to their third option (Welton) as well.”
Ford and the Bobcats held Portley to six points in their second matchup in two weeks. The Peacocks offense depended heavily on Welton in the first half.
Quinnipiac was able to regroup and close out the half with a seven-point run, cutting the lead to nine at 33-24. Quinnipiac head coach Tom Moore believes this run is what saved his team’s chances of making a comeback.
“A tale of two halves I guess… I thought we saved ourselves in the last five to six minutes of the first half,” Moore said. “We were really teetering… not only playing poorly but playing with no energy or emotion.”
In the second half Quinnipiac made a defensive adjustment to account for Welton’s dominance around the rim.
“In the second half we started doubling Welton,” Moore said. “The neat thing about it was it gave us a lot of energy and got us to attack a little in the half court on defense. You have to be really quick when you decide to trap somebody inside.”
The Bobcats surrendered only three points to Welton the rest of the game. The extra space on the perimeter allowed Quinnipiac’s guards to get their offense going. In the second half, 25 of the Bobcats 32 points came from the guards including four shots from beyond the arc.
The Bobcats took the lead seven minutes into the second half and never gave it back. Starting the second half off on a 13-2 run, the Bobcats took over the momentum of the game from their defense out.
The game came down to a defensive possession for the Bobcats where Chaise Daniels smacked Wyche’s shot 10 rows deep, leaving the Peacocks with 0.3 seconds left to win the game. Welton hit the shot off the inbound, but it was after the buzzer. The Bobcats held on to win 56-55.
A tale of two halves, as Tom Moore said, is certainly fitting for Quinnipiac of late. In three of the four games during their losing streak, the Bobcats were either winning or within five points at halftime. The Bobcats lost two of those games by double digits.
During the second half of this game, the Bobcats found their stride and rode it to a come-from-behind victory. Quinnipiac’s next game is Feb. 21 at home against Manhattan where a tale of two halves will likely repeat itself. The question is, which one?
