WALTHAM, Mass. -- After suffering only its fifth loss in its last 69 regular season Northeast-10 Conference games, the Bentley University men's basketball team will return to action Sunday afternoon with a 3:30 pm home game against Southern New Hampshire.
Bentley, 3-1 overall and 1-1 NE-10, will be looking to bounce back from Tuesday's 72-69 road loss to Saint Anselm. The Falcons, who had moved up to fifth in the NABC Division II rankings earlier in the day, had a 13-point lead late in the first half of that one, but were outshot 48-33 percent in the second half as the Hawks rallied for the win.
Southern New Hampshire, 2-1 overall and 1-1 in the conference, also came up short on Tuesday. The Penmen were held to just 14 percent shooting in the first half but closed to within three in the second half before falling to UMass-Lowell, 61-47.
Bentley senior All-America Jason Westrol (Brielle, N.J./Manasquan HS) finished last season with four straight 20-point games and has picked up where he left off this year. He tied his career-high with 28 in the Saint Anselm game, and is averaging 22.3 points, five rebounds, four assists and two steals with a .569 field goal percentage.
Westrol began the season 19th on Bentley's all-time scoring list and has since moved up to 13th with 1,461 points. He needs four to pass Mark Argust '01 and 39 to become the program's first 1,500-point scorer since Tim Forbes and Sean Cooke, both of whom completed their careers in 2006.
Juniors Tom Dowling (Rockville Centre, N.Y./South Side HS), Brian Tracey (Bow Mar, Colo./ Heritage HS) and Mike Quinn (Oakdale, Conn./Montville HS) are Bentley's other double-figure scorers. Tracey has been the team's top rebounder (9.8 average) and Quinn‘s 10 threes are a team-best.
Southern New Hampshire enters Sunday's game with the second stingiest defense and the lowest scoring offense in the Northeast-10. The Penmen both score and give up an average of 60.3 points a game, and have limited their opponents to a .348 field goal percentage, second only to UMass-Lowell's .342. Before losing to the River Hawks, coach Stan Spirou's team had begun his 25th season at the helm with wins over Bridgeport (72-69) and Saint Anselm (62-51).
Freshman guard Greg DeSantis tops the scoring list at an even 10 points per game, and has also accounted for 40 percent of SNHU's assists (13 of 33).
Others to be concerned with are sophomore guard Marcus Matthews, senior swingman Stephen Wood and junior forward Troy Stapleton, each of whom are between 8.7 and 9.7 points per game. Stapleton put up 16 points on Bentley last November when SNHU snapped the Falcons' record 46-game NE-10 winning streak, 85-77.
The winner of Sunday's game will have a 17-16 advantage in the all-time series. Bentley has prevailed in six of the last seven, including the last five played at the Dana Center.
Bentley will also be at home on Wednesday for a 7:30 contest with UMass-Lowell. The River Hawks take a 4-0 record into Sunday's game at Merrimack.
