EMMITSBURG — The Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball team went 33 minutes without the lead Thursday night, but still found a way to win.
After a back-and-forth affair in the final six minutes, the Mountaineers took the lead for good with 89 seconds remaining and held on to slip past visiting Long Island University, 66-60, at Knott Arena in the first game of a back-to-back series.
Junior point guard Damian Chong Qui scored seven of his team-high 15 points in the last 1:29 despite a severe cramp in his right calf, and junior forwards Nana Opoku and Malik Jefferson each posted double doubles of 14 points and 11 rebounds and 13 points and 12 rebounds, respectively, to lift Mount St. Mary’s (7-7, 6-4 Northeast Conference) to its fifth victory in seven games.
With the win, the Mountaineers keep pace in a tight conference race. Seven of the 10 teams ended Thursday above .500 in league play, with Merrimack (7-4 overall and in the conference) on top.
Mount St. Mary’s took a 4-2 lead just 71 seconds into the game, went 33 minutes without it, and then caught the Sharks in the final six minutes. The Mount prevailed despite shooting just 20% (4-for-20) from behind the 3-point line.
“Toughness won tonight,” coach Dan Engelstad said. “We didn’t shoot the ball well at all. I thought we took some good shots, and hopefully, those drop tomorrow. But our guys, they willed that to happen.”
A layup by redshirt senior forward Ty Flowers gave LIU a 60-59 lead with 1:44 left in the second half. The rest of the game turned into the Chong Qui Show as the Baltimore resident and McDonogh graduate nailed a midrange jumper at the 1:29 mark, drained a 3-pointer from the left wing 41 seconds later and then sank two free throws to cement the win.
“It was a broken play,” Chong Qui said of his 3-pointer that gave Mount St. Mary’s a 64-60 lead. “I drove it and felt that the guy wasn’t on me. I turned around, and he was nowhere near in sight. I hit the 3 and looked up, and we were up four. I knew we needed to make a play, and the ball dropped.”
Chong Qui had not practiced all week and wore a boot as he is battling tendinitis in his right ankle. But he played 34 minutes because a broken wrist suffered by freshman Dakota Leffew on Jan. 22 in a 65-64 loss at Central Connecticut has left him and junior Deandre Thomas as the only point guards on the roster.
Chong Qui shrugged off whether the tendinitis would bother him for the remainder of the season.
“When I’m out here, I’m out here,” he said. “When I’m out here, I’m going to be me. So I’m going to be good.”
Engelstad continued to be impressed by his 5-foot-8 team captain.
“He willed us to win this game tonight,” Engelstad said of Chong Qui. “That 3 that he hit, it was unbelievable, and it was big-time in a big moment. And he made all of his free throws. He’s just built as tough as they come. The moment is never too big for him because he plays for that.”
After the Sharks raced to a 49-40 advantage with 13:25 left in the second half, the Mountaineers turned to their post players. Opoku scored all 14 of his points in the last period, and Jefferson scored nine points over the same stretch.
After getting outscored 14-6 in the paint in the first half, Mount St. Mary’s turned the tables, compiling a 26-12 advantage in the lane in the second. Jefferson, who also battled exhaustion in the second half, said the coaching staff made an adjustment after recognizing the way LIU was guarding pick-and-rolls.
“We just noticed that the way they were guarding the ball screens, the roll was open a lot,” he said. “Me and Nana, we’ve been playing together for a long time. So we really just wanted to find each other.”
Opoku had five rebounds in the first half, but was not his usual self, according to Engelstad.
“I kind of fired him up at halftime,” he said. “I thought he went up not as strong as he’s capable of in that first half. So I challenged, and I told him that he needed to have a big half and that he had to be aggressive, and he was.”
Junior point guard Jermaine Jackson Jr. led all scorers with 19 points, and the Sharks (7-6 overall and in the conference) had two of their own finish with double doubles in Flowers with 11 points and 10 rebounds and redshirt junior forward Eral Penn, a St. Frances graduate, with 10 points and 12 rebounds.
But LIU, which entered the game ranked third in the Northeast Conference in scoring at 76.5 points per game, produced its lowest output of the season against the Mountaineers, who featured the league’s stingiest defense at 62.8 points.
“I feel like we just got back in transition,” Jefferson said. “That was a big part of the first half when they went on that early run. We were letting them speed us up with their press. So we just sat down and got stops.”
LIU@MOUNT ST. MARY’S
Friday, 4 p.m.