Pride fall behind Wildcats in second half of 85-77 Wednesday night loss

DUBUQUE, Iowa - Coming off of their first conference win of the season, the Clarke University men's basketball team was unable to make it two-in-a-row in their return to their home floor in an 85-77 loss to Culver-Stockton College on Wednesday night.

The Pride led 37-35 at the halftime break after the Wildcats hit a three pointer at the buzzer, Culver-Stockton would carry some of that offensive momentum over to the start of the second half, after trading baskets with CU early on CSC went on an 18-5 run over about four minutes of basketball to lead by nine points at 56-47.

Clarke's largest deficit over the next nine minutes of the game was no larger than 10, being able to cut the margin down to four points after a Desmond Jones layup made it 66-62 with 7:27 left to go, but another run from the Wildcats put them back up double digits at their largest lead of the night of 11 at 73-62 with 5:32 left in the game.

Again, CU hung around, cutting it to four points again after a three pointer from Jonovan Howard and two from Lovre Stanovic put the score at 75-71 but they never got closer than that four-point number, even after Carson Lindauer made it 81-77 with just over a minute left, but Amir Plair made a layup and Kamren Wires hit a pair of free throws for CSC to close out their second Heart win of the season.

Culver-Stockton's Damar Jenkins finished with a game-high 23 points leading a group of five Wildcats in double figures while Lindauer led Clarke's five double digit scorers with his 20 points performance on 7-of-11 (63.6%) shooting from the field as he added a team-high tying five rebounds.

Jones added 19 off the bench for CU while Stanovic scored 17, Howard scored 10, and Bryce Luster joined Jones with 11 more points of bench production but outside of those four and Lindauer, no other member of the Pride who saw minutes in the game scored for Clarke while CSC's five double digit scorers got six points of support from the rest of their roster, in a game where the visitors won by eight points.

Clarke men's basketball will be on the road for their next game this weekend when they travel to Oskaloosa, Iowa for a matchup against William Penn University for a 4:00 p.m. CT scheduled opening tip between the Pride and Statesmen on Saturday, Jan. 21.