Box Score Photo by: Davis Gerber
WHITTIER, Calif. – The Whittier College men's basketball team entered Saturday night's contest on a three game winning streak with wins over Caltech, La Verne, and Redlands but saw it snapped by the Kingsmen of Cal Lutheran University 82-75 dropping to 10-7, 4-4 SCIAC.
Whittier scored the first five points of the contest with a layup from Tyree Landrum (Los Angeles, Calif.) and a three pointer from Chris Barnes-Williams (Salt Lake City, UT), but it would be short-lived as CLU would add ten unanswered to go in front 10-5 before using a 21-5 run midway through the first half to go into the break up 45-28.
The second half proved differently however with the Poets outscoring the Kingsmen 47-37. They came out and struck quickly in the second half cutting the lead to six 55-49 thanks to a jumper and layup from Landrum.
After trailing by 10 with 6:13 to play Whittier made one final push cutting the CLU lead down to four at 74-70 following two three pointers from Barnes-Williams and Eric Jennings (Fontana, Calif.) and a jumper from David Richardson (Los Angeles, Calif.). But the Kingsmen would finish the half 17-of-18 at the charity stripe, which included a perfect 6-for-6 in the final minute, which sealed the seven point victory.
Barnes-Williams finished with a team high 22 points on 6-of-15 shooting, which included 4-of-10 from three-point territory. He was joined by Richardson who had a career high 16 points to go with six assists and two steals despite having a broken finger. Landrum was the last Poet in double figures with 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting with seven rebounds and Jennings and Nick Demusis (Mililani, HI) each had nine and eights points, each respectively.
For Cal Lutheran, three players recorded double figures led by Coltrane Powdrill and Corey Quintana who tossed in double doubles finishing with 27 and 14 points respectively and 11 rebounds.
Whittier returns to the road on Saturday, February 1st when they take on the Stags of Claremont-M-S beginning at 5:00pm.
