Box score

OREM, UT—Utah Valley took over first place in the Great West Conference men's basketball standings with a head-to-head 71-58 win over visiting NJIT, the previous leader, Saturday night in the UCCU Center on the Utah Valley campus

 

UVU upped its Great West record to 4-1 with Saturday's win over the Highlanders, who are 3-1 in the Great West. Both teams were hot coming in, each having won five of the previous six overall. Saturday's result leaves Utah Valley at 12-9 in all games, while NJIT is 7-12.

 

The Highlanders fell to the Wolverines despite a season-high 24 points for sophomore guard Chris Flores, who was the only player on either team to top 13 points.

 

Flores got 18 of his game-high point total on six 3-pointers, which tied the NJIT Division I record, first done by Kraig Peters vs. Longwood in 2007-08, matched by Flores last season vs. North Dakota, and by Jheryl Wilson earlier this season at Lafayette.

 

Isaiah Wilkerson scored 13 points for the Highlanders, plus a team-leading 7 rebounds, and Wilson finished with 11 points, all in the second half.

 

Utah Valley, which showed more balance than NJIT, had four double-figure scorers, led by junior forward Geddes Robinson's 13 points. Senior Justin Baker came off the bench for 12 points, leading the Wolverines to a 22-5 advantage in bench scoring.

 

Two freshman starters who graduated from high school in 2008, but who spent the next to years on LDS religious missions, also reached double-figures for UVU. Point guard Holton Hunsaker finished with 11 points, including a perfect 8-for-8 on free throws, six of which came between the 3:29 and 1:57 marks of the second half with NJIT fouling in an attempt to lengthen the game. Center Ben Aird, had a double-double for UVU, with 10 points and a game-high 12 rebounds. With the high scorer, Robinson, adding 9 rebounds, the Wolverines had a 43-35 team lead under the boards.

 

Utah Valley, which never trailed, dominated the opening 10:25, building a 19-point lead in that span and then saw NJIT battle back to trail by eight, 35-27 at the half.

 

The Highlanders were the superior team in the first 11 minutes of the second half and pulled to within a single point of the lead with a chance to tie at 9:09, when Jheryl Wilson scored on a layup and was fouled. However, Wilson missed the foul shot, which enabled Utah Valley to stay on top, 49-48.

 

A strong defensive team, UVU became extra stingy when its lead was trimmed to one, holding NJIT without a field goal and to just two points total for more than six minutes, until Wilson hit a jump shot for the Highlanders at the 3:08 mark.

 

Between the two Wilson buckets, the Wolverines had pushed their lead back to 15 points with a 16-2 run that put the game beyond NJIT's reach.

 

The Highlanders were 0-for-7 from the floor and 2-for-4 at the foul line during Utah Valley's decisive spurt. And the two makes at the foul line were the only ones in a dismal half that saw NJIT shoot 2-for-9 after a decent 7-for-11 free throws in the first half.

 

NJIT's second-half drought was not the first or the longest in the game. In fact, Utah Valley had one in the first half that went longer and allowed the Highlanders back into the picture after what had been a Wolverine blowout.

 

Utah Valley scored the game's seven points and made it first eight shots from the field in building a 21-7 advantage before Jordan Baker became the first Wolverine to miss nearly eight minutes in.

 

The perfection was over, but UVU's field goal shooting stood at 11-for-13 after Keith Thompson's steal and dunk made it 30-11 with 9:35 left in the first half.

 

That 19-point lead at 30-11 would be Utah Valley's biggest of the night, but it was still 33-16 for the Wolverines when Thompson made a jump shot with 8:06 left.

 

Remarkably, Utah Valley missed its last 10 shots from the floor and scored just two more points the rest of the way to halftime, as the Flores-led Highlanders got back into the picture.

 

Flores, who made four of his 3-pointers in the first half, had 16 of NJIT's 27 first-half points and was the only Highlander with more than four. Five different Wolverines had 6 points each, staking UVU to a 35-27 lead at the break.

 

Utah Valley's Robinson, a powerful transfer from Western Nebraska Junior College, scored the first bucket of the second half, but Flores answered with back-to-back threes and Wilkerson hit a jump shot to pull NJIT within three, 38-35, with 17:38 left.

 

Robinson broke the run with another layup at 17:17, but NJIT's Wilson dialed long distance on the next possession and it was a two-point game with 16:43 on the clock.

 

The teams traded points to keep Utah Valley's lead between two and five the next few minutes before Robinson made the second of two free throws to put his team up, 48-42, at 12:10.

 

NJIT then responded with what would be its final strong push, as Wilkerson hit consecutive jump shots in the lane; UVU's Baker made one of two free throws after Wilkerson's second bucket; and then Wilson scored to pull the Highlanders to within one with just over nine minutes on the clock.

 

The Utah Valley lead was still just two almost two minutes later, but senior guard Shawn Deadwiler made his only basket of the game, a deep three with 7:17 left, extending his team's lead to five and triggering a decisive 14-1 burst in just under four minutes.

 

With the visit to Utah for NJIT''s longest regular season away trip (2,178 miles each way) in the books, the Highlanders will return to New Jersey for the last two non-conference games of the season. The Highlanders will visit Fairleigh Dickinson for a game on Tuesday at 7 pm, followed by a home game against Longwood on Saturday at 2 pm.

 

The meeting with FDU will be the second all-time in men's basketball for the two schools, but the first since NJIT began Division I competition in the 2006-07 season. They first played just over 25 years ago on Jan. 13, 1986, and FDU won, 97-66. At the time, NJIT was competing in Division III, while FDU, then, as now, was in Division I.

NJIT also played against FDU's other campus, which competes in Division III and then was known as FDU-Madison, on 23 occasions during NJIT's pre-Division I years.