Blackbirds Spoil Bearcats Christmas

After playing solid basketball in three straight road games the Binghamton Bearcats were flat in a Friday evening home game and fell to the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds 74-66.

The Bearcats fell behind early 13-4 but closed the gap, led briefly and trailed by just one point at the half.  But the Blackbirds outplayed Binghamton in the second half and came away with a torrid shooting performance in the second twenty minutes hitting 61 percent of their shots to win by the eight point margin.

Binghamton was missing standout center Thomas Bruce who suffered an ankle injury in pregame drills and did not dress for the contest.  With one of the premier rebounders in the east on the sideline the Bearcats seemed out of sync and were unable to mount any scoring runs to threaten the Blackbirds.

Joel Hernandez led the Blackbirds with 25 points while Raiquan Clark was right behind with 23 tallies.  Binghamton forward Dusan Petrovic led his team with 13 points in a solid effort seeing his most playing time of the season

with Bruce injured and Bobby Ahearn in foul trouble and then fouling out of the game.  Everson Davis scored 10 points while J.C. Show finished with nine points.

The Bearcats are idle for the next week.  They finish their non-conference schedule on Saturday, January 30 with a home game against Elmira College.  The Bearcats open their America East schedule against Maine on Saturday, January 6th.