Box Score (PDF)

LOWELL, Mass. – After trailing by as many as 14 in the first half, the UMass Lowell men's basketball team (14-15, 6-8 AE) evened the scoreboard with eight minutes to go in the contest, although Hartford (15-13, 8-5) would hold on down the stretch to take the 75-73 decision on Senior Night at the Tsongas Center.
 
Senior Shawn Jones (Bridge City, La.) paced the River Hawks with 16 points and a career-high eight rebounds, while sophomore Obadiah Noel (Frederick, Md.) and freshman Alex Rivera (Lowell, Mass.) added 14 and 11 points apiece, respectively. In addition to Shawn Jones, fellow seniors Ryan Jones (Rio Rancho, N.M.) and Connor Bennett (Wilmington, Mass.) were also honored in a special pre-game ceremony.
 
"I'm happy my guys fought back, especially those last few minutes," said Head Coach Pat Duquette. "We never gave up. We played a very good Hartford team that has five senior starters, so I knew we would have to be really good to beat them. We were good for about 38 minutes, but I thought we had a two minute span where we lost our focus a little defensively. Other than that, I thought we played really hard."
 
Hartford tallied the first seven points of the night before Noel put the River Hawks on the board, and redshirt-senior Josh Gantz (Grove City, Ohio) and R. Jones followed with layups of their own to make the score 14-8 with 13:26 remaining in the first half. The visitors led by as many as 11 until Noel hit a jumper in transition and freshman Darius Henderson (Pasadena, Calif.) knocked down a triple, cutting the difference to 27-21 at 8:04.
 
Hartford answered with the next eight straight points to extend its margin to 35-21 with 5:23 left in the first. However, S. Jones then drained a triple of his own to spark a 16-4 run for the home team to close the gap to just 39-37 at 1:17. Noel would score once more in the half, but a last second layup gave Hartford a 43-39 advantage at the break.
 
The River Hawks used points from Gantz and redshirt-junior Christian Lutete (Silver Spring, Md.) to make it just a one-point game in the early minutes of the second, although Hartford would take a 50-45 edge with 15:20 still to play. The visitors maintained at least a one-point buffer until S. Jones drove to the hoop to erase the difference, 51-51, at 9:14.
 
Gantz returned a three on the River Hawks' next trip down the court to knot the score once more, but Hartford followed with nine in a row to pull away, 63-54, with just over five minutes remaining. The visitors also built a nine-point lead inside of the final three minutes, although UMass Lowell continued to battle from behind, using an 8-1 spurt that was capped off by an and-1 from S. Jones to pull within a basket, 69-67, with 45 seconds on the clock. Hartford went 4-for-4 at the line in the final seconds, and even though S. Jones hit a three before the buzzer, it was not enough to overcome the 75-73 difference.
 
Hartford now leads the all-time series, 11-6. The River Hawks close out the regular season with two games on the road beginning at Maine on February 27 at 7 p.m.