George Washington University
St. Bonaventure
Men's Basketball Slays St. Bonaventure, 78-71
1/6/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 6, 2010
OLEAN, NY -- George Washington's Lasan Kromah scored his career-high 23 points to lead the Colonials to a 78-71 victory over St. Bonaventure Wednesday night at SBU's Reilly Center. It was GW's 11th victory of the season surpassing last season's win total (10). It also marked GW's sixth victory in an A-10 opener in the last nine years under coach Karl Hobbs.
Kromah, who hadn't scored more than five points in any of the Colonials' last five contests, found his stroke early and poured in 4-4 three-pointers in the first half and added 11 points in the second half to propel GW in a back-and-forth affair that featured 12 ties and 16 lead changes.
St. Bonaventure (7-7, 0-1) was led by Andrew Nicholson's 16 points, one of four Bonnies in double figures. Jonathan Hall (15 points), Chris Matthews (14) and Michael Davenport added 10 points to pace the Bonnies.
The Bonnies took a 35-31 lead at the end of the first half on a three-pointer by Malcolm Eleby with one second showing. The Colonials came out in the second half with renewed energy and scored the first four points of the half on a dunk and layup by Joseph Katuka to tie the score at 35-35.
Neither team led by more than five in the second half when SBU's Nicholson converted a free throw with 6:43 left to give the Bonnies a 61-56 advantage. GW pulled even at 63-63 on a Bryan Bynes three-pointer before the Bonnies responded with a 4-0 run on a jumper by Davenport and a layup by Matthews prompting GW to call a 30-second timeout. The Colonials responded with an 11-0 run that was ignited by back-to-back three-pointers by Kromah and Damian Hollis and never trailed after that.
Tony Taylor and Hollis each converted a pair of free throws while Hermann Opoku added a free throw and a dunk. Lasan Kromah had a breakaway layup to close out the scoring for the Colonials.
GW shot 53.7 percent (29-54) from the field and held the Bonnies to 42.6 percent (26-61) shooting. The Colonials' long-range shooting was the difference as they poured in 9-14 (64.3 percent) from beyond the arc while the Bonnies hit just 4-20 (20 percent) from downtown.
GW (11-3, 1-0 A-10) returns to Smith Center Sunday to host Xavier (8-5, 0-0) in an Atlantic 10 Conference game at noon. The game will be televised on CBS College Sports network and will be broadcast live on 1500 AM and 820 AM and as well as online at www.FederalNewsRadio.com.
