College Basketball
Loyola Maryland outscores UMass Lowell 93-81, Mount St. Mary’s rolls past Coppin State
Senior Andrew Kostecka, last year’s Patriot League scoring leader, scored a game-high 27 points and snatched 10 rebounds as Loyola Maryland (8-4) raced past visiting UMass Lowell 93-81 at the Reitz Arena in Baltimore. It was Kostecka’s third career double-double.
The Greyhounds, who led 46-43 at the half, shot a crisp 62.7 percent from the field in notching their fifth straight victory. It’s Loyola longest winning streak since November 2012 when it won six consecutive games.
Senior guard Christian Lutete tallied a team-high 24 points for the River Hawks, who dropped to 6-8 on the season. Junior guard Obadiah Noel scored 18 points and dished off a career-high six assists and Ronald Mitchell added 13 points while also posting six assists for UMass Lowell.
Loyola (Md.) travels to Richmond on Sunday to take on Virginia Commonwealth while UMass Lowell plays eleventh-ranked Michigan in Ann Arbor that same day. It’ll be the second time this season that the River Hawks have played a nationally-ranked team from the Big Ten, having lost an earlier bout to Ohio State 76-56 in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 10th.
Mount St. Mary’s (4-9) broke out of a shooting slump by draining a season-high 14 shots from beyond the arc as the Mountaineers rolled past Coppin State 79-55 on Friday evening.
Guards Jalen Gibbs scored 27 points — a season high — including a half-dozen from 3-point range, and Vado Morse — the NEC’s leading rookie last season — added 22 points for Mount St. Mary’s, which scored 22 points off turnovers.
Forward Koby Thomas, a Robert Morris transfer, scored a team-high 17 points and Kamar McKnight and Andrew Robinson added 16 and 13 points, respectively, for Coppin State (4-10), which has lost four straight.
Mount Saint Mary’s, which is coming off a 9-22 finish a year ago and is expected to finish sixth or seventh in the Northeast Conference, hosts Wagner in a conference tilt on Thursday while Coppin State visits the Atlantic 10’s Fordham Rams in a non-conference game on Monday.
