Box Score

Galloway, NJ … The College of New Jersey men's basketball team ran into a red-hot opponent on Wednesday night as they fell to Richard Stockton College 74-62 in New Jersey Athletic Conference play.
 
The Lions (6-6, 1-2 NJAC) made a strong push in the second half to make it a tight game, but their comeback effort fell short as the Ospreys (8-5, 2-0 NJAC) held on for their fifth consecutive win. The win by Stockton came one night after seizing the 500^th career win for head coach Gerry Matthews.
 
Freshman Emmanuel Matlock (Trenton, NJ/Solebury) led TCNJ with a season-high 11 points. Senior Kyle Rawson (Warren, NJ/Watchung Hills) had 10 points and three assists in the game, while junior Donovan Smalls (Union, NJ/Union) also finished with 10 points and a pair of assists.
 
Osprey Bill McDonough had a tremendous performance registering a double-double with a game-high 22 points and 18 rebounds. Salman Yusaff, who leads the NJAC averaging 1.9 blocked shots per game, finished with 14 points and four blocked shots. Rich Suhr added 13 points in the win.
 
The Lions got off to a quick start taking a 7-2 lead in the opening minutes. The Ospreys came alive with a flurry of offense, however, as Suhr connected on a pair of three-point shots to lead Stockton on an 18-3 run to take a 20-10 lead at the 9:30 mark of the opening half. Suhr entered the game leading the NJAC in three-point shooting percentage, making 51 percent of his attempts from long distance.
 
After Lions' forward Dan Balevski (West Windsor, NJ/West Windsor South) converted a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to single digits, the Ospreys rattled off 11 unanswered points and headed to the locker room holding a 38-21 advantage.
 
TCNJ came out ablaze in the second half, hitting five of its first six shots. Emmanuel Matlock scored seven straight points and after Smalls drained a jumper, the Lion had closed the gap to 10 points in under four minutes.
 
The battle under the boards keyed TCNJ's resurgence in the second period. After being outrebounded 34-17 in the first 20 minutes, the Lions played even under the glass with Stockton in the second half.
 
With just over 10 minutes to play in the game, junior William Lester (Middlesex, NJ/Middlesex) and sophomore Matthew Rista (Point Pleasant, NJ/St. Anthony's) drilled back-to-back three-pointers to make it a 46-43 game with 10:10 to play.
 
The Ospreys eventually regrouped and rode the shoulders of McDonough, who was especially clutch from the charity stripe down the stretch. He hit all eight of his free throws in the final minutes as Stockton hit 28-of-36 as a team.
 
Balevski matched a career-high in rebounds for the Lions with eight while Lester equaled his career-best with eight points that included a pair of treys.
 
TCNJ returns home to continue conference play when they take on Rutgers-Newark on Saturday, January 7 at 3 p.m. in Packer Hall.