Box score

NEWARK, NJ—A driving double-pump reverse layup along the baseline by Chris Flores with four seconds remaining propelled NJIT past visiting Texas-Pan American, 58-57, in Great West Conference men's basketball Saturday afternoon in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
NJIT, which won its third straight game and raised its record to 2-0 in the Great West and 9-9 overall, led for all but 3:28 in the first half and by as many as 13 points in the second half. But tenacious Texas-Pan American (6-16 overall, 1-1 Great West) forced the thrilling finish by taking its first lead of the second half with 28 seconds left.
 
The Highlanders were on top all the way from the 7:16 mark of the first half until 28 seconds remained in the game and Texas-Pan American's Jared Maree hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key to give his team a 57-56 lead.
 
NJIT took a timeout with 19 seconds left and set up a play that isolated Flores one-on-one with a Bronc defender on the left wing. Flores, who would share game scoring honors at 17 points, drove hard from the wing and approached the basket along the left baseline where his reverse layup spun through the basket with four seconds on the clock.
 
After another Highlander timeout to set the defense for the last possession, NJIT slowed the ball in the backcourt off the in-bounds pass before Texas-Pan American's Jesus Delgado launched a shot from midcourt that went off the top of the backboard as the buzzer sounded.
 
In addition to Flores' 17 points, the Highlanders got 13 points and a game-high seven rebounds from Isaiah Wilkerson and Ryan Woods added 12 points.
 
Texas-Pan American had three double-figure scorers, headed by 17 points for junior point guard Aaron Urbanus. Maree, a senior guard, added 15 points and sophomore forward Josh Cleveland came off the Broncs bench for 13 points—all in the second half.
 
Texas-Pan American announced less than an hour before tipoff that five players, including two who had been listed as probable starters, were suspended one game for having violated team rules. As a result, the Broncs dressed seven men, including Cleveland, who played a career-high 31 minutes for them off the bench and was the key player in a late rally that culminated in Maree's triple that put UTPA ahead by a point in the final minute.
 
The Highlanders grabbed an early 7-1 lead, but Texas-Pan American, which preferred to play a half-court game on both ends of the floor, milking time on most possessions, hung in and went ahead for the first time, 15-13, thanks to back-to-back 3-pointers for Urbanus, the second one at 10:54.
 
After Flores hit a free throw for NJIT, Brandon Provost scored on a layup to put UTPA on top, 17-14.
 
The Highlanders answered with 12-0 run that began with three straight 3-pointers, as Woods tied the game and Flores put NJIT back ahead at 7:16, before Woods hit another three and later made a free throw at 5:34 for a seven-point lead, before a Flores layup made it 26-17 for the Highlanders with 3:51 left in the half.
 
Urbanus broke the NJIT run with his second trey of the half, but the Highlanders closed the period with a traditional 3-point play for Wilkerson with nine seconds left, giving the home team at 31-22 lead at the break.
 
Flores and Woods shared game scoring honors in the first half, with 10 points apiece, while Urbanus had nine to lead Texas-Pan American. Neither team got a point from its bench in the first half as three men—Urbanus, Jared Maree, and Provost—accounted for all of their team's points and three Highlanders—Flores, Woods, and Wilkerson—combined for 27 of NJIT's 31 first-half points.
 
NJIT scored the first two baskets of the second half to take what would be its biggest lead of the day, 35-22, with 17:45 left.
 
But the Broncs, who shot 10-for-17 (58.8 percent) on threes in the game and even better in the second half (5-for-7) answered the 13-point deficit with a triple from Provost to get back within 10.
 
The Highlanders got a couple of free throws from Woods to get the lead back to 12, but Maree made a traditional 3-point play and Cleveland made the first two of his 13 second-half points to trim the NJIT lead back to seven.
 
Flores made a 3-pointer for the Highlanders, but Urbanus answered in kind with his own three, dropping the NJIT lead back to seven, 40-33, with 14:20 left.
 
A Cleveland jump shot made it a five-point game, before Flores broke the 5-0 UTPA spurt with a layup. However, Urbanus made another triple 30 seconds later, beginning a series of three straight possessions, two for the visitors, that ended with made threes.
 
The lead continued to ebb-and-flow, with the Broncs responding to NJIT, but never pulling closer than four points, a gap that occurred three times between 12:08 and 7:52, when a Cleveland layup closed the score to 50-46, NJIT.
 
PJ Miller then went on a personal five-point spurt, with a layup, a baseline jumper and then a free throw on the front end of one-and-one that pushed the Highlanders back to a nine-point advantage, 55-46, with 4:54 left.
 
Cleveland, who shot 5-for-5 from the field and 3-for-5 at the foul line in the second half, converted an old school 3-point play on the next possession for Texas-Pan Am, triggering an 11-1 run (six points by Cleveland). The rally was capped by the go-ahead three at 0:28 from Maree, who was wide open at the top of the key, where he fired home a catch-and-shoot basket off of pass out from under the basket by Provost.
 
The Highlanders, who hadn't made a field goal since a Miller jump shot at 6:06, then got the game-winning bucket on the Flores drive.
 
NJIT, now 8-1 at home on Fleisher Family Court, including the current three-game winning streak, will play its next two games on the road in a demanding conference swing to face North Dakota on Thursday and Utah Valley on Saturday.
 
NJIT has won the last three games in its two-year, four-game series vs. North Dakota, but UND went on to win the 2011 Great West Conference Tournament. And Utah Valley, the Great West regular season champion last year, won both games last season against the Highlanders, who were 9-1 in the regular season against the rest of the conference.