SALEM, VA--After getting the season off to a slow start, the Roanoke College men's basketball team fought its way to the top of Old Dominion Athletic Conference standings and clinched a tie for the top spot heading into the league tournament this coming weekend with a 78-63 win over visiting Eastern Mennonite on Tuesday evening.
The Maroons end their regular season with a 19-5 overall mark and a 14-4 league record, while EMU, which has already clinched the tournament's number-seven seed, falls to 9-15, 7-11 in league action. In the win, Roanoke's senior guard Brad Dunleavy (Roanoke, VA/William Fleming) became the 26th player in team history to score 1,000 career points.
The Maroons held onto just a two-point halftime lead, 30-28, but opened up the second half on a 17-1 run to gain an 18-point lead, 47-29, and take control of the game. The Royals managed to score just one point in the first seven minutes of the second half. During Roanoke's run, Dunleavy and fellow senior Jason Strickland (Charlottesville, VA/Covenant) had dunks. At one point, Dunleavy scored nine consecutive points for the Maroons. His layup with 16:19 to go, which put the Maroons up 38-29, pushed him above the 1,000-point barrier.
Roanoke extended its lead to as much as 22 points in the second and saw the Royals close the gap to as little as 12. The Royal defense was unable to stop the Roanoke offense all game long. For the game, Roanoke shot 51.7 percent from the field, including a 52.0 percent clip in the first half.
Eastern Mennonite scored the first four points of the ball game, but saw the Maroons drop in 16 of the next 20 points to take as much as a nine-point first half lead. The Royals did not go away, however, and with 3:15 left in the first took its final lead of the contest on a Joel Kauffman (Baxter, KY/Harlan) three-pointer. The final five points of the first half were scored by Roanoke's Robby Pridgen (Akron, OH/St. Vincent-St. Mary) to give the Maroons the two-point edge heading into the break.
Pridgen finished the contest with a game-high 18 points. The sophomore was 6-of-10 from the field and 3-of-4 from three-point land. Dunleavy tallied 15 in the contest and now has 1,008 for his career. Dunleavy also added a game-high six assists to the RC effort. Only two of 14 Roanoke players that saw action in the game did not score in the contest.
Kauffman's 16 paced all Royal players, and was the only EMU athlete in double-figures. The Royals made just 39.3 percent of their attempts from the field in the second half and turned the ball over 18 times.
Roanoke will next face Lynchburg College at 1:00pm on Saturday in the quarterfinals of the ODAC tournament. Lynchburg secured the final spot in the tournament with a 66-51 upset of Randolph-Macon on Tuesday. The Maroons swept the Hornets in the regular season.
