Evan Greening continued his excellent junior season with yet another double-double, leading the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford men's basketball team (6-11, 5-5) to a 73-57 victory on Saturday afternoon at Franciscan (1-15, 1-10).
"It's nice to start the second half of league play with a road victory," said Pitt-Bradford head coach Britt Moore. "The Franciscan trip is never easy, but we turned it on when we needed to."
Greening racked up a team-high 24 points and 13 boards while Eric Matheson followed with 18 points and four steals. Manny Welch chipped in with 10 points while Tim Atkinson and Forest Works rounded out the Panther's offense with six points each in the win.
John Paul Dombrowski was impressive for the Barons, scoring 16 points and gathering 13 boards while Keoni Sablan added 16 points in the loss.
Moore, was quick to give credit to assistant coach Jesse Deloof for having the Panther's ready for anything Franciscan tried to do.
"Coach Jesse did an excellent job scouting them," Moore said. "He knew all of their sets and really had our guys dialed in."
The teams played to a 31-31 tie in the first 20 minutes, but the Barons picked up the first two buckets of the second half to take a 37-33 lead.
However, the four-point margin quickly turned into a Baron's deficit as Matheson and Colton Holzwarth buried back-to-back three pointers to give the Panthers a 42-41 lead with 15:47 left.
The teams traded buckets over the next two possessions, until Greening took over and quickly gave Pitt-Bradford all of the momentum.
The Fredericksburg, Va. native scored four straight buckets while Sahlil Harris and Welch each added a layup to give the Panthers a 10-point lead at 56-46 with just over 10 minutes to play.
Franciscan made a last ditch effort to climb back into the game, cutting the Panther's lead to five at 57-52 on a Sablan three-point jumper with 7:11 left.
Matheson quickly answered with a long-range jumper of his own and the Panthers dominated the final six minutes, leading to the 73-57 victory over AMCC foe, Franciscan.
