In Fordham’s first five games it counted on the duo of Marcus Stout and Bryant Dunston to do most of its scoring. The pair scored 51 percent of the team’s points in those games.
Last night at Draddy Gym at Manhattan, however, Dunston had an off game and Stout was in foul trouble, forcing the Rams to look elsewhere for offense – and they got it in a 66-57 victory over the Jaspers.
Fordham got strong performances from Chris Bethel (15 points), Brenton Butler (15 points) and Sebastian Greene (11 points, seven rebounds) to snap a three-game losing streak and win the 100th meeting between the two Bronx rivals.
“It was just gutsy,” Rams coach Dereck Whittenburg said of the victory. “We hung in there. We had some miscues, but we showed some toughness too, by coming back in the second half, making some big plays. We really gutted out a tough win on the road.”
Fordham (3-3) held a seven-point lead at halftime, but it suffered a blow when leading-scorer Stout picked up his fourth foul three minutes into the second half. The Jaspers (3-3) managed to cut the Fordham lead to 39-38 three minutes later but could never capture the lead.
Every time Manhattan went on a run, Fordham answered. After again falling behind by 11 points with eight minutes left, the Jaspers again rallied. Jamel Ferguson drew Manhattan to within two, 55-53, with a fast-break layup at the 4:45 mark. But the Jaspers did not score for another four minutes, six seconds, and Fordham put the game away, with Butler scoring eight points in the final three minutes.
“Shots just didn’t fall for us or maybe we didn’t get that defensive stop,” Manhattan forward Devon Austin said of his team’s inability to grab the lead. “It was a number of things. Either that or we turned the ball over at the wrong time.”
Bethel gave the Rams a lift off the bench in the first half. The 6-foot-5 sophomore scored 15 points in the opening half, one point less than his career high. He made 7-of-9 from the field and led Fordham with five rebounds. The points were huge with Dunston scoring six points in the game. Dunston and Stout came into the game averaging a combined 33 points per game but scored 14 last night.
“It’s like a pick-your-poison thing,” Manhattan coach Barry Rohrssen said. “You know how good those two guys are. You would hope that you could do a good job on them defensively but there’s always another area that can come in and hurt you. In the first half, for us, that was Chris Bethel.”
He scored nine points in a row in the middle of the half as Fordham took control. The Rams held a 31-18 lead with 3:09 to go before halftime and looked as if they were going to coast into the half, but Manhattan went on a 11-5 run to close the gap to 36-29 at the break.
Fordham 66 Manhattan 57