Men's Basketball suffers first GNAC loss - falls 74-67 at Norwich

(Northfield, Vt.) The Rivier University Men's Basketball team fell on the road this afternoon to Norwich University, 74-67 in a Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) matchup to begin 2015.

The Raiders picked up their first conference loss of the season and drop to 2-7 overall, while the Cadets improve to 1-1 in the GNAC and 4-4 on the year.

Rivier was led by junior Edward Soucie (South Ryegate, Vt.) who had 14 points, while freshman Andre Ruff (Lowell, Mass.) tallied 13 points and five assists for the Raiders.

Freshman center Mike Hogervorst (Leiden, Netherlands) was one of the four players that scored in double digits and led the squad with 22 points and six rebounds with a pair of blocks. Junior Alex Preckol (Westford, Mass.) added 11 points, while senior Evan Tullar (Chelsea, Vt.) and sophomore Kevin Ross (Ontario, Calif.) both contributed 10 points each.

After leading 32-19 at the half, the Cadets saw their 13-point lead diminish after the Raiders nailed six three-pointers in the first 10 minutes to trail 50-45 at the 9:41 mark of the second half. The Cadets managed to extend the margin to 10 as Preckol scored six of the seven points to make it 57-47 with just seven minutes remaining.

The Raiders converted four three-pointers to spark a 14-2 run in the next six minutes to cut the deficit to five with 1:16 remaining in the game. Looking to continue that run, Rivier began to rack up the intentional fouls, but the Cadets would hit all four of the shots from the stripe. The Raiders hit their 13th three of the game to trail by three points in the final seconds, but Norwich would hit the three of the four shots from the free-throw line to hold on for the 73-67 win.

The Cadets shot 51.1 percent from the floor and 82.8 from the free throw line. They had 14 points from the bench and 34 points in the paint. Rivier shot 38.1 percent from the floor and hit 40.6 of their shots from beyond the arc.