Courtesy Vermont Sports Information
BOSTON, MA – Quincy Ford scored a career-high 23 points and grabbed eight rebounds to lead the Northeastern men’s basketball team to a 77-65 win over Vermont in non-conference action Tuesday afternoon at Matthews Arena. Vermont’s struggles on the road continue as it slips to 1-6 away from home and below .500 overall heading into the holiday break at 6-7. The Huskies improve the 8-4.
Ernie Duncan recorded a new career-high with 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting including 5-of-10 from downtown. Trae Bell-Haynes finished the afternoon with 16 points and a pair of assists. Cam Ward and Drew Urquhart also reached double figures for the Catamounts with 12 and 10 points, respectively.
Ford buried seven of Northeastern’s 13 three-pointers en route to the new career-high. Caleb Donnelly came off the bench to score 15 points on five 3-pointers and leading scorer David Walker went for 11 points and six assists.
Northeastern has now won two of the last three meetings between the two teams since the 2005 America East title game.
UVM and NU went back and forth through the first eight minutes of the first half before the Catamounts jumped out to a five point lead, its biggest of the game, at the 12 minute mark when Duncan canned the first of his four first-half trifectas. Northeastern then caught fire from deep going on a 14-2 run which included a pair of three pointers from both Ford and Donnelly to take a 23-16 lead.
Duncan and Ford then had themselves a bit of a contest from long range. Duncan kept his team in the game burying three more deep 3s while Ford managed to shake the Catamount defense loose for two more of his own.
The Huskies built an eight point lead (41-33) with 2:15 left but a deep triple from Ward and a slashing move by Kurt Steidl trimmed the lead to five at the half.
Duncan scored back-to-back buckets – the second of which tied the game at 50 – in the paint to get Vermont going to start the second half. Bell-Haynes knocked down one-of-two from the line to give UVM a one-point lead before Northeastern and Donnelly answered with bucket from long distance.
After a pair of Urquhart free throws tied the game at 53 with 10 minutes to go, Ford and Donnelly burned the Catamounts again to the tune of two more threes to push the lead back out to six just over a minute later. The Huskies outscored Vermont 24-12 over the final 10:06 to pull away for the win.
Vermont will break for the holiday but returns home on Dec. 29 for a 2 p.m. contest against MAAC rival Siena at Patrick Gym. That game can be seen on AmericaEast.tv and heard on ESPN 101.3 FM starting at 1:30 with AJ Kanell and Bernie Cieplicki on the call.