Orange Crush Cruises Past Bronx
Saturday, December 10th, 2011
Middletown, NY - The SUNY Orange Men's basketball team continued its winning ways with its third win in a row and fourth in the past five games. The victory over Bronx CC was the best of the week. Orange had it working on both ends of the floor for a convincing 96-86 win. The 86 points Orange gave up does not tell the story of how good its defense was. Bronx came into the game averaging over 95 points a game. Orange held Bronx to 31 first half points and Bronx was on fire in the second half hitting 8 very well guarded 3's. Orange defenders continuously had a hand in the Bronx players faces as they hit their shots. On the rare occasions that the Bronx did miss it was one and done for the Broncos. Orange once again relied on it's calling card, dominant rebounding. Cody Williams had 17 rebounds, Ryan McNeill-Moses had 15, and Avery West pulled down 10 rebounds and had 3 blocks.The first half was text book Orange basketball. The team opened up with a 13-2 run to open the game. Williams and West sparked the opening run with 5 and 4 points respectively. West punctuated the opening stretch with a thunderous dunk with 15:15 left in the half. The rest of the half saw Bronx battle back and cut the deficit to three after two made free throws from an Orange technical foul made it 35-32. Orange came up big in the final two minutes of the half to finish with an 8-0 run. The run included a three by Marian Smith, a three by Avery West, and a shot at the buzzer by Smith for another two. Orange went into the locker room up 11, 42-31.
Orange opened the second half with a dunk by Ryan McNeill-Moses off a rebound and outlet by Malcolm Covington. The crowd went nuts as Ryan had many friends and family in attendance. McNeill-Moses continued to impress. In addition to his 15 rebounds he also had 10 points, 7 assists, and 4 steals. The Orange lead stayed between 8 and 16 the rest of the game. Leading scorers in the game for Orange were Avery West with 26, Marian Smith with 24, and Cody Williams chipped in with 21. Smith continues to be hot from behind the arc with 9 made threes for the week.
The win moves Orange to 8-3 on the season. Orange continues Tuesday with a Mid-Hudson Conference match up with Westchester on Tuesday night. The game is in Valhalla at 7:00 pm.
