Despite a postgame senior night celebration, the final regular season home game for DePaul men’s basketball ended like many other this season: A slow start, followed by a near-comeback in the second half before eventually falling, this time to Rutgers 68-64. “You know, we’ve seen that kind of game quite a few times this year, where we got off to a little bit of a sluggish start, we’re down a bit at the half, and then we battled back in the second half to cut it to one, two, three, or four and then kind of shoot ourselves in the foot with a turnover and a missed defensive assignment,” Head Coach Oliver Purnell said after the game. “Our guys battled hard, there’s no question about that, I think that’s pretty apparent, but we gotta be a little smarter. We got hurt by several plays that we kind of saw coming and we went over in the scouting report today, and we just didn’t execute defensively own the stretch.”
The loss meant the Blue Demons finished the season winless at home in conference play.
Brandon Young led the Blue Demons with 21 points on 7-14 shooting, while Moses Morgan added 10 himself. No other Blue Demon scored in double figures.
The Red Storm had four players score at least 10 points, including a team-high 18 from Jonathan Mitchell and 13 from James Beatty, who also dished out five assists.
After trailing 32-22 at the half, DePaul had a chance to tie the game late once again thanks to a 42-36 scoring advantage for the Blue Demons in the second half.
With DePaul down three and 26 seconds on the clock, the Blue Demons inbounded the ball and ran down the court. Young found Morgan open behind the 3-point line with 22 seconds left, and Morgan took the shot. It rattled out, and Rutgers’ James grabbed the rebound.
“I felt it was a pretty good look, but now that I think about it, I had enough time to drive and maybe we could have fouled them and then it would have been another chance to go to overtime,” Morgan said.
Purnell said he was fine with the shot, even if it was early in the shot clock.
“We wanted to get an open shot, and we thought we could get something open,” he said. “And I thought he was open. Either the pass was behind him or he fumbled it. One or the other, because he definitely fumbled it. It was open there. And obviously, we are a team that, if we can get an open look for Jimmy [Drew], [Jeremiah Kelly], Moses, we want them to fire it. We don’t want to work it around and take the chance that we’ll get another good shot.”
Still, the team managed to get the score close after a rough first half in which they shot only 9-24 from the field.
“Obviously we wanted to come out and get a win for our seniors,” Young said, referencing senior night. “But we just didn’t play hard two halves. We didn’t come out aggressive in the first half, so the outcome of that, we took an L.”
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The Blue Demons travel to Syracuse on Saturday to close out their regular season play. Tip is at 3 p.m.