Bucknell University
1-010-7 / PL
Navy
0-15-12 / PL
Shazier's Career Night Lifts Bucknell Men to 71-64 Win Over Navy
1/8/2011 7:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 8, 2011
ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Senior point guard Darryl Shazier scored 23 of his career-high 28 points in the second half to help Bucknell get off to a positive start in Patriot League play with a 71-64 win at Navy Saturday night at Alumni Hall. Mike Muscala scored 19 points and Joe Willman added 12 for the Bison, who have won eight of their last nine to improve to 10-7 on the season.
Freshman J.J. Avila scored 20 points for Navy (5-12, 0-1), but the Bison spoiled the Midshipmen's night with famous alum David Robinson in attendance as part of a 25th-anniversary celebration of their 1986 Elite Eight team.
Bucknell shot 55.2 percent and outscored Navy 44-36 in the second half after trailing by one point at the half. The Bison had another terrific night at the foul line, making 14 of 16, including 6-for-6 in the final 20 seconds to win the game.
Shazier came into the game with a reputation as a distributor. He leads the league in assists and ranks fourth in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio, but on this night Navy concentrated on cutting off his passing lanes. The senior adjusted, taking the ball to the basket time after time, and he finished 10-for-17 from the floor and 7-for-8 from the line. His previous career high was 27 points against Holy Cross last season.
Bucknell attempted only 11 3-pointers, making three, while Navy tried three times as many, finishing 8-for-33 from the arc. The Bison outscored Navy 34-18 in the paint, finished with a 36-31 rebounding edge, and forced the Mids to take almost 60 percent of their shots from 3-point range.
The Bison flipped a three-point deficit into a 45-39 lead with an 11-2 run midway through the second half. Shazier was the catalyst, first hitting a tying 3-pointer, followed by a steal and fastbreak layup. Muscala's layup capped the run at the 10:17 mark.
Navy stayed close with 3-pointers by Romeo Garcia and Avila, but then six straight Bucknell points, topped off by a Willman baseline jumper, gave the Bison their largest lead to that point, 53-45.
A pair of 3-point plays by Avila helped Navy crawl within a pair at 55-53, but then Shazier drove the line twice for layups, the second time drawing a foul to make it a 3-point play, giving the Bison a 60-53 lead with 4:46 left.
Avila, the Patriot League's top freshman scorer who already had 20 in the game, fouled out on a moving screen with 4:31 left. But the Bison could not take advantage, as they had foul issues of their own, and Navy had good success getting to the line.
The Mids went 7-for-8 at the stripe over a 71-second span, the last two by Jordan Sugars pulling Navy within 62-60 with 2:39 to play.
Muscala answered with two charity tosses of his own with 2:16 left to make it a two-possession game. After a Garcia miss, Willman dove on the floor to tie up a Navy player in a scrum for the loose ball, and the Bison had the arrow.
After draining the shot clock, Shazier came up short on a 3-pointer, but Sugars missed at the other end and Shazier rebounded in traffic. The Bison point guard made the front end of the 1-and-1 but missed the second with 30 ticks left, and then Sugars was fouled on a layup attempt at the other end. He made both to make it a 65-62 game.
Shazier went 4-for-4 in clutch 1-and-1 free-throw situations to stretch three-point leads to five, and after an Isaiah Roberts miss with eight seconds left, Muscala rebounded and iced the game with two more charity tosses.
Both teams got off to ragged starts, as the first bucket of the night came on an Avila 3-pointer 3:39 in. Trailing 6-2, the Bison turned to Muscala and G.W. Boon, who combined for all the points in an 11-3 run. Boon hit a 3-pointer to give Bucknell its first lead of the night at 11-9, then he followed with two free throws to make it 13-9.
Navy tied it on two straight Mark Veazey jumpers over Muscala, and then with the Bison ahead 18-16, the Midshipmen scored 10 straight points to grab a 26-18 lead. Avila had eight of those 10 points, coming on a driving layup and a pair of 3-pointers.
Bucknell scored the final five points of the first half on a short jumper by Boon and a 3-point play by Shazier to pull within 28-27 at the break.
Even though he finished with just two points, Bryan Cohen had an underrated night for the Bison. He led the team with eight rebounds and played strong defense on Sugars, who came in as Navy's leading scorer at 16.0 points per game. Sugars finished with 12 on 4-for-12 shooting.
Shazier added six rebounds, three assists and three steals to his 28 points, and Boon finished with seven points. The Bison shot 47.4 percent for the game and committed only nine turnovers.
Navy finished at 35.7 percent overall and 24.2 percent from 3-point distance, and the Mids connected on 16 of 17 from the foul line.
Bucknell snapped a four-game losing streak to Navy, although those four losses came by a total of 10 points. It was the first win over Navy since the 2008 Patriot League Tournament quarterfinals, when John Griffin hit a shot from just inside halfcourt to give the Bison a triple-overtime win.
Bucknell is back in action Wednesday at American at 7:30 p.m. The Eagles defeated Lehigh at home earlier in the day on Saturday behind 39 points from Vlad Moldoveanu.
