Box score

WEST POINT, NY—Like an action movie hero hanging off a cliff and appearing to lose his grip finger-by-finger, visiting NJIT pulled back to safe ground at the last instant, holding on for a 54-53 men's basketball win at Army in a game that was undecided until the final buzzer.
 
NJIT (3-3) got 40 of its points in Wednesday night's non-conference matchup from two men.

Sophomore Lamar Kearse, making his first start of the season, scored a game-high 21 points, with 15 coming in a first half that saw the Highlanders build a 34-20 lead by the break. Senior captain Isaiah Wilkerson added 19 points, including 12 of his team's 20 second-half points, and also grabbed a team-high nine rebounds and made a game-high four steals.
 
Army, which fell to 2-5, nearly reversed the scoring in the second half, flipping the 20-34 first-half deficit to a 33-20 advantage in the second 20 minutes.
 
The Black Knights got 11 points from junior Ella Ellis and 10 points and eight rebounds from junior Jordan Springer. Freshman Maxwell Lennox, who is a 6-foot freshman guard, pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds.
 
The win was the first for the Highlanders in four all-time tries against Army, which won last year's meeting at NJIT, 63-60 on a running 45-foot basket at the final buzzer.
 
The Highlanders, who went ahead to stay 53 seconds into Wednesday's contest and ultimately never trailed again, appeared safe when Wilkerson scored the last two of his 19 points for a 54-44 lead with 3:43 remaining.
 
But the NJIT scoring was over for the night and the Highlanders would need some strong crunch-time defense and a measure of luck in order to leave the grounds of the United States Military Academy victorious.
 
The Black Knights scored five points on the two possessions immediately following Wilkerson's final bucket, closing to within five points with 2:26 left. Then Mo Williams made it 54-51 on a drive at 1:02.
 
After two NJIT misses on the next possession, Jordan Springer scored for Army on a fast-break layup with 20 seconds left and was fouled on his driving shot that pulled his team within a point.
 
Springer had made both of his previous free throws in the game, sending his season total at the stripe to 12-for-13. And the Army team was 15-for-17 in the game when Springer stepped to the line looking for the tie that never came. Springer missed the foul shot and Chris Flores, who rebounded for NJIT, threw an outlet pass to junior Ryan Woods, who was fouled.
 
Woods, an excellent 81 percent career free throw shooter, missed his try on the front end of a one-and-one chance and Army rebounded and pushed the ball ahead.
 
The final shot for the Black Knights, looking for their second-straight buzzer-beating win in the series with NJIT, was an off-balance baseline layup try for Josh Herbeck off of a drive down the lane. Herbeck, who was blanketed by three defenders, was falling to the floor as his last-ditch attempt rolled off the rim at the buzzer.
 
Aside from the wild finish, the game featured two remarkably improbable team statistics. NJIT won despite the rarity of not scoring a point from the foul line, where the Highlanders finished 0-for-5. Army, on the other hand, finished 15-for-18 at the line (83.3 percent).
 
However, NJIT made 10 3-point field goals (10-29), while Army, a decent 34-percent shooting team from distance in the first six games, shot a dismal 2-for-24 against the Highlanders.
 
Army went 1-for-15 in the first half from behind the arc and 1-for-9 in the second. Ellis, who had made 11 threes coming in, and Herbeck, who was 17-for-42, including seven made against Bryant and 4-for-8 last game vs. Yale, each shot 1-for-7 against NJIT.
 
Looking ahead, three of the next four games for NJIT will be on the road against teams from the Big East Conference. The rugged road begins on Saturday afternoon at 1 o'clock with a first-ever meeting against Georgetown at the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, DC.
 
Heirs to one of the richest legacies in all of college basketball, the 2011-12 Hoyas are 5-1 and are listed among teams “also receiving votes” in both major national Top 25 polls.
 
Georgetown won the 1984 National Championship and has made four other Final Four appearances, with 27 total NCAA Tournament berths and 16 Big East championships to the Hoyas' credit.