The men’s basketball team fell in two consecutive Patriot League matchups this week.
The Leopards traveled to Lehigh University on Jan. 25 for their first Rivalry matchup of the season but struggled to score against the Mountain Hawks, losing 86-47. The team then played host to American University on Wednesday, but could not keep up with a second-half run from the Eagles and fell 75-68.
The Maroon and White (3-6 Patriot League, 8-14 overall) went down early against Lehigh (2-7 Patriot League, 7-13 overall), falling to a 20-point deficit halfway through the first half.
The Leopards were able to narrow the deficit 31-19 with 4:28 remaining in the half, but the Mountain Hawks were unstoppable from the field, shooting 60% from the field, 66.67% from three and 100% from the free throw line, which sent the Maroon and White into the locker room trailing 43-21.
It took more than a minute of game time for either team to score coming out of the half, but the Leopards began to draw fouls and get on the free-throw line and were able to cut the deficit to 20 points.
However, the team collectively went 0-22 from the 3-point line over the course of the game, which limited freshman guard and team-scoring leader Alex Chaikin to just six points.
Without the deep ball, senior center Justin Vander Baan led the team with 11 points, but the Leopards were unable to stem the tide and allowed Lehigh to continue to stretch its lead and win by a 39-point margin.
The Leopards looked to rebound on Wednesday against American, the top-ranked team in the Patriot League. Despite an early 9-0 run from the Eagles, sophomore guard Andrew Phillips sunk two 3-pointers to get the Maroon and White on the board and into the game.
Freshman guard Caleb Williams said that their coaches gave them “all the confidence in the world to keep shooting” after the 0-22 performance from three at Lehigh.
“When we keep shooting, the ball is gonna have to eventually fall in,” Williams said.
Limiting the Eagles to just five points in the last five minutes of the half, the Leopards clawed closer thanks to contributions from six different players and went into the break down just two points, 33-31.
Chaikin said that the team approached the game with the mindset that “every game is winnable in the Patriot League.”
“Just because they’re number one, that didn’t phase us, so we just try to come in here and execute,” Chaikin added.
The Maroon and White were able to tie the game up with 15 minutes left to play off of a pair of free throws from Vander Baan and took the lead three minutes later off of a 3-pointer from Chaikin. The Leopards were able to stretch a lead to as many as seven but went cold from the field as the game wound down, which allowed American to retake the lead and comfortably close with a 7-point win.
“I thought we did a lot of good things, but towards the end there, down the stretch, we made some mistakes and didn’t follow our details, and it led to us losing,” Chaikin said.
The Leopards will face Colgate University (6-3 Patriot League, 9-13 overall) on Saturday as they begin the second half of their Patriot League season against the team tied for second in the conference.
While Williams said he was “discouraged” by the loss to American, he noted that the team needs to “get back in the lab” before Colgate.
“We can’t be too down on ourselves, because we about to play the second-best team in the league,” Williams said.
Martin Familetti ’25 contributed reporting.
