NORFOLK, Va. - The Tigers hung with the Colonial Athletic Association's defending champion, Old Dominion, well into the game before the Monarchs put Towson away 80-57 with late action beyond the arc.
The Tigers, playing their fourth game in eight days and their third on the road during that span, dropped to 4-17 and 0-11 in the league. The Monarchs, picked to repeat as CAA champions in all the pre-season polls, improved to 17-5 and 8-3 in the conference.
Towson ran stride-for-stride with the Monarchs for most of the first half. Three-point sharp shooting propelled Towson while Old Dominion took advantage of its dominance on the boards to keep the Tigers within sight.
The Monarchs, the CAA's top rebounding team, scraped the boards clean, out muscling the Tigers 33-12 off the glass. However, there weren't that many misses in the game. ODU shot 63 per cent (32-51). The Tigers were 23 of 48 from the floor.
There were five ties and eight lead changes before the Monarchs could break away and take a 34-27 lead into halftime.
RaShawn Polk and Josh Brown worked behind the arc, combining for 5-5 shooting in the first 20 minutes. Brown, in fact, put on a three-ball clinic, connecting on 5 of 6. He finished as the game's high scorer with 19 points.
Braxton Dupree's put back at the 12:44 mark gave Towson its first lead, 11-10. For most of the next nine minutes the Tigers had the upper hand.
Brown's three-pointer with 3:27 left in the period moved the Tigers into their last lead, 27-25. Towson went scoreless for the rest of the period while the Monarchs closed with a 9-0 run and assume a seven-point lead at the break.
"We've got to play almost perfect basketball to get a win over the league's top teams," said Tiger head coach Pat Kennedy. "We had the lead but allowed Old Dominion to get a run late in the first half. Later in the game we didn't rebound the ball off one of their missed foul shots and that led to a 9-2 run just when we were rallying."
ODU's run continued into the second half with a couple of quick buckets by Kent Bazemore and a trey by Ben Finney. Dupree's baseline jumper at the 18:34 mark stopped the run but by that time the Monarchs had built a double-digit lead they didn't want to give up.
A couple of Tiger three-pointers trimmed ODU's lead to 10 (54-44) before the Monarchs got the real break they were looking for to put the game out of reach.
ODU's Chris Cooper plunked both free throw attempts. On his second miss he batted the ball back to Bazemore who buried a three-pointer for a 57-44 Monarchs' lead with 8:44 left. Bazemore followed with another triple. Finney added a third on ODU's next trip down the floor as the Monarchs' lead grew to 65-46 with 6:34 to play.
Isaiah Philmore and Dre Conner joined Towson's three-point shooting clinic, which was 10 of 20 for the game, to help the Tigers cut ODU's lead to 67-55 with 4:16 remaining. However the Monarchs would get hot from downtown too, scoring 12 of their last 13 points from behind the arc.
Philmore chipped in 13 points and grabbed a team high four rebounds. Polk netted 11 points. Dupree, hampered by a turf toe injury, had six points and only one rebound.
Bazemore led five Monarchs in double figures with 17 points. Frank Hassell registered a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds.
The Tigers return to the court Wednesday night when they travel to Philadelphia to face the Drexel Dragons. Opening tip is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. The game will be carried back to Towson on WTMD (89.7 FM) Radio.
