The Shippensburg University men’s basketball team used a ferocious attack and shutdown defense to run up the score 41-19 by halftime and, ultimately, took down the visiting Bloomsburg Huskies 68-65 on Saturday afternoon at Heiges Field House.

“We executed and we did what we needed to do today to neutralize them, which was great,” Shippensburg coach Chris Fite said. “We had a 21-point lead at halftime and we had a 21-point lead with eight minutes left in the game and then we just kind of went brain dead a little bit. All in all, for 32 minutes it was great, but it wasn’t pretty at the end.”

Four different Raiders scored in double digits, including junior Jay Hardy, who rode a barrage of first-half 3-pointers to 16 points on 4-for-6 shooting from behind the arc.

Senior Dylan Edgar continued his impressive play with 13 points and eight rebounds. Freshman Dustin Sleva finished the game with 15 points, eight rebounds and six assists, and sophomore Abe Massaley totaled 10 points, seven assists and four boards.

Bloomsburg freshman Christian Mortellite paced the Huskies with 17 points, and junior Moustapha Noumbissi and senior Jon Riles scored 10 and 13 points, respectively, in the game.

Shippensburg (10-8, 6-8 PSAC East) shot with 61 percent accuracy in the first half, and 55.8 percent by the end of the game, while limiting Bloomsburg to 35.7 percent shooting in the contest. The Raiders out-rebounded the Huskies 20-8 in the first half and 34-29, overall.

“Our defense is what we’ve been hanging our hat on all year long,” Fite said. “Our defense was excellent tonight, even playing with a huge lead like that. Our defense won us the game tonight.”

Shippensburg came out to start the game with as much energy as it has had all season, jumping out to a 10-2 lead behind 3-balls from freshman Justin McCarthur and Hardy, who also slammed home a highlight-reel dunk.

From there, the Raiders went on a brilliant 28-11 run, highlighted by three Hardy 3-balls with another from Sleva. The run ran the clock out on the period and Shippensburg went into the locker room with a 41-19 lead.

Bloomsburg (9-10, 5-10 PSAC East) was unable to close the deficit to fewer than 19 points, until 6:51, when the Huskies decided that the Raider’s stalling tactics could play into their hands. They started chipping away at the lead and trailed 51-60 after a Mortellite 3-pointer with 2:52 left in the game.

More than a minute later, Shippensburg still held a 12-point lead, but Mortellite put the team on his back and scored the next 10 points on his own to close the deficit to three points with 27 seconds to go. He couldn’t close it out by himself, however, and whiffed on a 3-pointer with seven seconds to go to hand Shippensburg the 68-65 win.

“Shippensburg is a great team and they really beat us in the first half,” Bloomsburg coach John Sanow said. “That was the difference in the game; very little first-half effort from us and a huge effort in the second half. I think we scored 46 points after 19 points in the first half, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to pull out the win.”

The Raiders return to the court when they visit East Stroudsburg (14-6, 12-4 PSAC East) this Wednesday at 6 p.m.

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