Box Score
ANNVILLE, Pa. – Senior guard Jimmy Curran scored 17 of his game-high 22 points in the first half, and the Lebanon Valley College men’s basketball team led from start to finish in its 71-64 Commonwealth Conference win over Moravian College at the LVC Gymnasium Wednesday evening.
With its win, Lebanon Valley (13-9, 5-6 CC) remains in fifth place in the Commonwealth Conference standings, but the Flying Dutchmen are now just one game out of the fourth and final Commonwealth playoff spot. Susquehanna and Widener both lost Wednesday night and share fourth place at 6-5.
Curran shot 4-for-7 from 3-point range as he moved past Dick Shover ’57 and into 15th on Lebanon Valley’s career scoring list. He currently has 1,238 career points.
Junior forward Peter Ruth shot 7-for-10 and tied a career-high with 14 points to go with nine rebounds for the Dutchmen. Sophomore guard Kyle Enoch added 10 points and five assists.
Moravian (10-12, 3-8 CC) was led by junior forward Chris Earley, who scored a career-high 17 points in 26 minutes off the bench. Ryan Miller added 14 points for the Greyhounds while Mark Franzyshen had 10 points and nine rebounds.
After trailing by as much as 17 in the first half, Moravian rallied in the second half and trailed by only five (67-62) with 1:03 on the clock after a pair of Earley free throws. The Greyhounds were the beneficiary of two missed LVC foul shots with 45 seconds left but were unable to capitalize, as Franzyshen bricked the front end of a 1-and-1 with 36 ticks showing.
Sophomore guard Dustin Kerns and Enoch iced the game at the line, where the two combined to go 4-for-4 over the final 17 seconds.
Lebanon Valley surged to an eight-point lead three and a half minutes into the game, as a 3-pointer from Curran put the Dutchmen up 10-2 with 16:28 on the clock. Moravian whittled the gap down to three (14-11) on a Greg Jones trey with 13:26 to go in the opening half, but the Valley used an elongated 11-4 run to open up its first double-digit lead (25-15) of the night after a lay-up from freshman forward James Shinn with 6:44 remaining.
The Dutchmen put together a 10-2 run late in the half, and back-to-back Curran 3’s gave LVC its biggest lead (38-21) of the night with 1:32 to go. Earley scored a pair of buckets in the final minute to make it a 38-25 game at halftime.
Moravian shot just 39.3% in the opening stanza and went 1-for-10 from 3-point range. Lebanon Valley shot 44.4% and was 5-for-12 from beyond the arc in the first half.
The Dutchmen return to Commonwealth Conference action on Saturday when they visit Juniata College, which is in second place in the conference standings, at 8 p.m.
[Photo - Sophomore guard Dustin Kerns, who hit a pair of big free throws in the final minute of Lebanon Valley's 71-64 win over Moravian on Wednesday]
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