No. 24 Scots Celebrate “Senior Night” With 80-63 Win Over Gators

WOOSTER, Ohio – The College of Wooster, back in the D3hoops.com top-25 poll this week at No. 24, scored the last eight points of the first half and opened the second with a 14-5 run to take control over Allegheny College, and the Fighting Scots went on to an 80-63 North Coast Athletic Conference win at Timken Gymnasium on Wednesday night.

Wooster (19-5, 13-4 NCAC), which celebrated the careers of seniors Xavier Brown, Jalen Goodwin, and Evan Pannell pre-game, held a slim 22-20 lead late in the opening half when the momentum swung in a big way.

The 8-0 stretch that followed consisted of a Josh Kipfer lay-in off of a nice feed from Goodwin, an Alex LaLonde lay-up, assisted by Ari Stern, two Stern free throws, and then a driving lay-up by Stern at the buzzer.

That gave the Scots a 30-20 halftime cushion and they carried the momentum over into the second. The transition game picked up and the 14-5 stretch, which featured six points for Brown, put Wooster suddenly ahead 44-25 with 14:17 remaining.

Allegheny (10-14, 7-10 NCAC) crept back into it, closing within 13 points on a series of possessions, including 64-51 with just under five minutes to play.

The Scots accounted for the next five points to make it just about an insurmountable 18-point lead at the 3:46 mark.

The difference in the game was Wooster's 13 steals – its second-highest total of the season – off of 23 Gator turnovers. The Scots scored 33 points off of those turnovers, compared to 13 for Allegheny in that category.

Despite a tough night from 3-point range (2-for-12), Wooster shot the ball fairly well overall, hitting 54.4 percent from the field (31-for-57).

Post players Dan Fanelly and Kipfer led the Scots, tallying 15 points apiece, with Fanelly adding a game-high 12 rebounds for his seventh double-double this season. Also of note, Fanelly had three dunks during a three-minute span of the second half, one an alley-oop from Spencer Williams.

Pannell contributed 14 points (6-of-8 field goals) plus three assists and Brown had 13 tallies in the scorebook.

The Gators' Evan Zabriski tossed in a game-high 22 points.

The Scots will close out the regular season on Saturday afternoon at Oberlin College (10-14, 6-11 NCAC).