The Defiance College Yellow Jackets (7-8, 0-4) were unable to revenge their December 30 overtime loss as they dropped their second match-up with the Mount St. Joseph Lions (9-5, 3-1), 76-64, Saturday at home.
Freshman C.J. Johnson was the top scorer for the Jackets with 19, just missing the game high tie with Mount’s Kevin Darthand at 20. Three Jackets, Matt Voland, Bryan Post, and Mike Lentz, chipped in eight a piece, with the DC bench contributing 24 points.
The Lions powerful 21-7 lead at the 13:18 mark seemed to have been slowed as the Jackets came within 10 (27-17) after a Voland field goal. Twenty-three seconds later, the Lion’s answered with a six point run in 1:07 following Chris Huening’s two connections at the charity stripe. Although the Jackets were once again able to cut the lead to 12, Mount’s Robbie Noschang brought it back to 15 (25-40) going into the half as he hit both free throws due to the technical foul called on the Jacket bench.
The Jackets started the half on fire as they cut the lead to nine and kept the Lion’s scoreless in the first 2: 44 minutes, but were unable to capitalize. A four minute drought after Voland’s free throw at 12:17 was extinguished when Voland was called for the Jacket’s second technical foul at the 8:15 mark. Noschang, who was 5-6 from the stripe, once again converted both shots and sparked an 8-2 Lion run to bring the lead back to 17.
Although the Jackets cut the lead to eight several times, they were unable to fight through Mount’s defensive pressure. The largest deficit, 18, came in the first half at 11:09.
DC outrebounded the Lion’s 46-32 and more than doubled Mount on second chance points, 16-7.
The DC defense held Noschang, who is third in the conference in scoring (16.3 ppg), to just 10 points.
The Jackets will be on the road Wednesday night when they continued conference play at Anderson University, tipping-off at 7:30 p.m.