LACEY, Wash. – There are no more unbeaten teams in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference after the shorthanded SFU men's basketball team, playing its first game in six weeks, lost 80-55 to Saint Martin's Saints Saturday evening in Marcus Pavilion.
The loss dropped SFU to 1-1 in GNAC play, 6-4 overall. SFU was the last unbeaten team in conference play. Saint Martin's is now alone atop the GNAC standings with a 4-1 record, 11-3 overall.
SFU had to postpone its first four games after the winter break due to COVID protocols within its team and its opponents, and Saturday it played without its two leading scorers—centre
Julian Roche and forward
Jasdeep Singh.
SFU trailed 37-28 after the first half when it went 0-for-9 on threes. The team finished 4-of-25 from beyond the arc while the Saints connected on 8-of-12 threes (66.7%).
SFU actually led early in the game, 16-15, at the midway point of the first half and pulled to within four, 47-43, early in the second half but after that it was all Saints. SFU scored just 39 points over the final 30 minutes. SFU has been averaging 77 points per game and shooting .292 percent on threes.
Freshman guard
Elliot Dimaculangan led SFU with 15 points on 5-of-10 shooting, scoring three of SFU's four threes, going 3-of-8 from long range.
Wilfried Balata and
Jordan Lyons also reached double figures in scoring with 12 points each. Balata was 5-of-13 from the field and grabbed five boards in 21 minutes. Lyons was 4-of-6 shooting with five rebounds and three blocks in 34 minutes.
SFU will play a rescheduled game on Tuesday, January 18, when it is scheduled to host Alaska in the West Gym in a game that begins at 2PM. The contest was originally scheduled for January 6.
It is the first of three games next week as SFU is scheduled to host Montana State on Thursday (7PM) and Seattle Pacific on Saturday (7PM).
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