Huskies win nail-biter 81-80 over StFX

(HALIFAX, NS)—The Saint Mary's Huskies defeated the StFX X-Men 81-80 on Wednesday night from the Homburg Centre in Atlantic university sport men's basketball action.

SMU guard Nikita Kasongo (Montreal, Que.) led all scorers on the night with 24 points and seven rebounds.

The Huskies jumped out to a 25-11 first quarter lead and used a 19-15 second quarter score to take a 44-26 halftime lead.

StFX used a 32-22 third quarter score to trim into SMU's lead 66-58 after thirty minutes.

Both teams traded buckets in the fourth quarter—as the X-Men outscored SMU 22-15 in the final frame—and the game went down to the last possession for StFX.

The X-Men elected to play defense in the final minute and not foul the Huskies.

StFX forced a turnover with 19 seconds and called their final time-out trailing 81-78.

The SMU defence forced StFX into two bad three-point attempts, as the X-Men scored a lay-up at the buzzer and Saint Mary's held on for the 81-80 victory.

Kevin Bercy (Kanata, Ont.) paced StFX with a double-double, scoring 17 points and pulling in 15 rebounds.

Also scoring for StFX were Julius Antoine (Vaughan, Ont.) with 16 points, Cameron Walker (Dallas, Texas) 11 and Tristen Ross (Truro, NS) had 10.

Nico Brauner (Wiesbaden, Germany) chipped in 21 points and six rebounds for SMU while teammate Kemar Alleyne (Scarborough, Ont.) had 18 points and nine rebounds.

Saint Mary's improves to 7-4 on the year while StFX fall to 4-7 in conference play.

Up next for StFX is a visit to the 2-9 Cape Breton University Capers January 20^th.

Saint Mary's hits the road for two games in versus the 10-1 UNB Varsity Reds January 26^th-27^th.

Dominic Nolasco, SMU

Photo Nick Pearce