Men’s Basketball Wire-to-Wire Play Not Enough at #3 Washington U.

(ST. LOUIS, Mo.) - The Carnegie Mellon University men's basketball team traveled to St. Louis, Mo. on Sunday, February 23 and dropped an 83-79 heartbreaker to the third-ranked Bears of Washington University in University Athletic Association (UAA) play after leading most of the second half.  Carnegie Mellon moves to 11-13, 4-9 while Washington is now 22-2 and remains perfect in UAA play at 13-0.

Washington started the game scoring the first seven points, but Carnegie Mellon used a 12-1 run over a span of four minutes to grab a 14-11 lead with 14:26 to play in the half.  The run was capped off with a senior Asad Meghani (Dallas, Texas/The Greenhill School) triple.  
    
Carnegie Mellon took its largest lead of the half (39-27) when senior Rashaun Riley (Houston, Texas/Cypress Creek) converted a pair of foul shots with 2:19 left in the half.  The Bears then scored the last six points of the stanza to cut the visitor's lead in half as Carnegie Mellon led 39-33 at the break.

With the score 45-41 Carnegie Mellon, freshman Jack Serbin (New Albany, Ohio) and Meghani connected on back-to-back three-pointers to extend the lead to 51-41 with 16:43 on the clock. Washington then scored 10 straight points to knot the score at 51-51 with 13:47 to play.

The Tartans used a 12-4 run that started a minute later to push the lead to 66-58 with 10:12 to play.  Washington once again cut the lead in half with 3:46 on the clock at 73-69 on a Tim Cooney layup, but junior Seth Cordts (Amherst, N.H./Souhegan) scored four straight points to make the score 77-69.

Washington held the Tartans scoreless over the last 2:42 of the contest as the Bears scored 12 points to steal a victory away from the Tartans, 83-79.  The Bears took their first lead of the second half on an Alan Aboona layup with 52 seconds left in the contest.

Carnegie Mellon finished shooting 43.9% from the floor to Washington's 46.6%.  The Tartans had five players score in double figures with senior Christian Manoli (San Rafael, Calif./Terra Linda) leading the way with 14. Meghani, Cordts and Serbin each added 13 apiece while Riley finished with 12.  Manoli tied a career-high with eight assists as the senior also hauled in nine rebounds to lead the Tartans. Manoli along with Meghani each had four steals.

Cooney recorded a game-high 26 points to lead the Bears while Aboona and Nick Burt had 17 and 15 points, respectively. Burt tallied a double-double with a game-high 13 rebounds.

Carnegie Mellon will conclude its season Saturday, March 1 when they host Case Western Reserve at 5:00 p.m.