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Kenyon College Athletics

80
Winner Kenyon Kenyon 8-5,2-2 NCAC
75
Wooster Woost 4-10,1-4 NCAC
Winner
Kenyon Kenyon
8-5,2-2 NCAC
80
Final
75
Wooster Woost
4-10,1-4 NCAC
Score By Periods
Team 1 2 F
Kenyon Kenyon 35 45 80
Wooster Woost 22 53 75
Jack Corrigan Conaty
Prince Davenport

Game Recap: Men's Basketball |

No more Wooster whammy, Owls subdue Scots

WOOSTER, Ohio -- Wednesday night at Timken Gymnasium, third-year head coach Steve Phillips and his Kenyon College Owls basketball team defeated The College of Wooster Fighting Scots, a feat not accomplished by Kenyon's previous four head coaches spanning the last 30 years.

Kenyon's 80-75 win at Wooster ended a lengthy losing streak to the Scots, a run that covered 63 games and started with a home loss on January 5, 1996. In fact, the last win for Kenyon over Wooster occurred on March 4, 1995 in the second round of the NCAA Division III Tournament.

The Owls' triumph was powered by exceptional shooting, particularly from first-years Jack Corrigan Conaty and Nicholas Graves. Corrigan Conaty was a remarkable 8-of-9, missing only his final shot. He was 5-of-6 from beyond the three-point line and finished with 23 points. Graves edged his classmate with a team-high 24 points on 8-of-12 shooting from the floor and 6-of-8 shooting at the free throw line.

Kenyon, which never trailed in the conference contest, shot 52.9 percent (27-of-51) as a team and was 50.0 percent from long range (10-of-20). Graves was 2-of-3 on three-pointers and sophomore Jackson Burke, who finished with 14 points, was 3-of-4 with the long ball.

Graves scored the first four points of the game and, about five minutes later, Corrigan Conaty rattled in a trio of three-pointers that gave the Owls a 15-10 lead nine minutes into play. Wooster later pulled within three points, but would get no closer the rest of the way, as more Kenyon three-point connections from Graves and Corrigan Conaty pushed the Owls ahead by as many as 15 points before they settled on a 35-22 halftime lead.

The lead went back up to 15 early in the second half, but, during a 53-second span, Wooster scored eight straight points to trim its deficit to seven. Five minutes later, around the 11:33 mark, the Fighting Scots drained a three that pulled them within five points.

Graves fired back with two quick layups that moved Kenyon's lead to nine, at 57-48, and over the Owls' next few possessions, more points in the paint were scored by Corrigan Conaty and Marius Mazeika, giving Kenyon a 63-50 lead with just under eight minutes to play.

That double-digit lead held up until the final minute of the game. Wooster cut it to nine points with 41 seconds left and then to seven points with five seconds left. A buzzer-beating half-court shot from the Scots banked in and made the final score look closer than what it actually was.

Six players accounted for all the Kenyon scoring and all six were either first-years or sophomores. In addition to their point totals, Burke and Mazeika each tallied a team-high six rebounds.

Wooster got a team-best 21 points and seven rebounds from Jaiden Cox-Holloway, as well as a team-best eight rebounds and 15 points from Isaac Roeder.

The win moves Kenyon to 8-5 overall and 2-2 within North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) play. Only halfway through this season, those eight wins already surpass the win total of any Kenyon team dating back to the 2016-17 season.

The loss sent Wooster to 4-10 overall and 1-4 in NCAC action.
 
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