Franklin Pierce Edges Stonehill, 61-58
Hunt paces Ravens with 22 points; Minifield grabs season-best 12 rebounds
EASTON, Mass. (February 4, 2004) - Franklin Pierce held Stonehill College to just two field goals over the final 6:39 in posting a 61-58 victory in Northeast-10 Conference men's basketball action at Merkert Gymnasium tonight.
Senior preseason All-American Jimmie Hunt (Utica, N.Y./Mount Ararat (Maine)) led Franklin Pierce to its third-straight win with 22 points as he hit six-of-11 from the field to go with a 9-11 effort at the line. He also added four rebounds and five assists for the Ravens.
Freshman point guard Darryl Minifield (Brookline, Mass./Brookline) added nine points to go with a season-best 12 rebounds, three assists and three steals. Classmate Nazim Senaldi (Istanbul, Turkey) also netted nine points and chipped in three rebounds and two steals.
Senior swingman Ricardo Scott (Boston, Mass./Cushing) led Stonehill with a game-high 24 points (16 first half) to go with 11 rebounds and two assists. Junior forward Evan Pellerin (Toronto, Ontario/Jarvis C.I.) also registered a double-double, finishing with 12 points and a game-best 13 rebounds and two steals.
Senaldi keyed the Ravens comeback with a pair of three-pointers including one to put Franklin Pierce up for good (57-55) with 1:20 to play. Minifield added a driving lay-up and Hunt iced the win with a pair of free throws with 11.4 to play to cap a 7-0 run.
Sophomore Chris Kraus (Markham, Ontario/Markham District) canned a three with 3.5-seconds on the clock to pull the Chieftains within three points, then stole the Ravens inbound pass and had his running three-pointer to send the contest to overtime carom off the back of the rim.
The Ravens raced out to a 13-4 lead five minutes into the contest sparked by three-pointers from Minifield, Hunt and senior Derek Rodgerson (Newburgh, Mass./Hampden Academy), who finished with nine points and saw his streak of double-digit games halted at 16.
After settling for a one-point halftime lead, the Ravens scored the first four points of the second stanza to open a five-point cushion (36-31). Stonehill reeled off a 16-6 run to take a 47-42 lead midway through the second stanza, before Franklin Pierce answered. Stonehill was hampered by a 4-12 effort at the free-throw line in the closing half by Pellerin.
Franklin Pierce converted 85.7-percent of its attempts from the line for the night and outscored the Chieftains 18-7 in that category overall.
Franklin Pierce (10-10, 7-9 NE-10) returns to action on Saturday when it travels to Waltham, Mass., to face Bentley College at 3:30 p.m. Stonehill (8-11, 4-11 NE-10) visits Southern New Hampshire University Saturday at 3:30 p.m.