Rider’s wild rally comes up short after long delay
LAWRENCEVILLE » An already unusual season took another unexpected twist when the Rider men’s basketball team’s game against Marist on Saturday night was delayed for 47 minutes after the rim on one of the baskets was bent and needed to be replaced.
It wasn’t clear how the rim, which Rider was warming up on was broken, but it was noticed about 10 minutes before the regular scheduled tip-off at 7 p.m. when both teams returned to their respective locker rooms. It was then determined that the bent rim would need to be removed and replaced by a new one.
Both teams returned to the court around 7:30 p.m. and re-warmed up for 10 minutes. Referees had Rider’s Tyrel Bladen dunk on the new rim to make sure it was secure.
The Broncs should have stayed in the locker room.
They were down four touchdowns and a pair of field goals with 7:23 left in the first half in a game that delivered one of the most mind-boggling scores of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference season.
Marist 41, Rider 7.
It finished, 76-67, in favor of the visitors after a wild Rider rally in which it had the ball down seven with less than two minutes remaining came up short.
The Red Foxes (8-6, 6-6), who snapped a nine-game losing streak against the Broncs (4-11, 4-8), hit 10 first-half 3-pointers and scored 51 points. They had 64 in Friday night’s game first game — one that Rider actually led by 20 with six minutes left in the second half. Marist scored the game’s first 11 points and connected on nine of its first 10 attempts from beyond the arc.
Talk about a turnaround. Shooting at the replaced basket,
the Broncs — now 0-6 in the second game of a back-to-back — didn’t even test the new rim in the first four minutes. Three of their first four shots were airballs. Rider went on to miss its first 10 3-point attempts and hit just one-of-14 in the period.
And yet the Broncs made it interesting — really interesting — in the second half.
Sparked by an attacking Dwight Murray Jr. (16 points), the hotshooting Allen Powell (20 points) and little-used freshman Jaelen McGlone (13 points), they cut what was once a 34-point deficit to seven with 2:13 remaining when Jeremiah Pope splashed a corner 3-pointer. The Broncs won the second half, 45-25, after being outscored, 51-22, in the first half.
The Red Foxes needed a threepoint play from Braden Bell (15 points) with 1:28 to push the lead back to 10 after Rider had the ball down by seven, but missed a shot. Ricardo Wright scored a gamehigh 22 points for Marist.