Sports

Manhattan nips Fordham

The 105th Battle of The Bronx lived up to its billing.

Though Manhattan and Fordham spent more than 30 minutes of last night’s game using Rose Hill Gym as the stage for a brutal bludgeoning of the beautiful game of basketball, the two rivals somehow provided a thrilling final five minutes in which the Jaspers escaped with a 65-58 win.

It was Manhattan’s (2-3) second straight win over the Rams (1-5) and ninth victory in the past 12 meetings.

“It wasn’t the prettiest game, but it was very hard fought,” said Manhattan coach Steve Masiello. “There’s obviously a lot of room for improvement, but we’re happy with the ‘W’.”

Manhattan’s 27 turnovers and Fordham’s 36.4 percent shooting resulted in a stalemate for most of the affair, as the teams traded leads, with neither facing a double-digit deficit.

In Fordham’s first home game of the season, the Rams led by as many as four, and were ahead for nearly eight minutes in the second half, but the Jaspers utilized a devastating pick-and-roll, pick-your-poison, combination of Michael Alvarado and Rhamel Brown, which seemed to work no matter who ended up with the ball down the stretch.

Manhattan finally retook the lead on a pass from Alvarado to Brown to go up 53-52 with 4:07 remaining. The Rams realistically entertained notions of a comeback until Branden Frazier missed the front-end of a one-and-one free throw with Fordham down 58-54 and 52 seconds left.

Alvarado, a sophomore guard, was named the game’s MVP, finishing with a game-high 19 points.

“Mike hates to lose maybe more than I do,” Masiello said. “I said, ‘From now on, I’m going to start telling you the game starts at six because you showed up about an hour and a half late tonight and played the last 10 minutes: But he said, ‘Time was running out. I had to step it up.’ ”

Alvarado, a Bronx native, then chimed in, “We take it a little personal since the schools are so close to each other.”

Without the injured Chris Gaston, Fordham relied on sophomore center Ryan Canty, who had 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting and four blocks, but the big man received little help as the team put on a putrid shooting performance. The Rams went 3-for-20 from the field, including 0-for-8 on 3-pointers, to open the game.

The foul-plagued first half had little flow and the Jaspers looked on their way to a repeat performance of last year’s 34-point thrashing after taking an early 15-7 lead, but the Rams responded with a 12-1 run and ended the half down 26-23.

“We’re six games into a season and we have to find a way to win basketball games,” Fordham coach Tom Pecora said. “If they accept losing, they accept it their entire lives. We practice here, we bleed here, we sweat here every day, and you can’t allow people to come in here and win.”

howard.kussoy@nypost.com