Beaver takes down Fayette for second straight conference win

By: Matylda Zamudio

Fayette, Pa.— The Penn State Beaver men's basketball team brought down Penn State Fayette 65-50 on Saturday, scoring its second of back-to-back PSUAC matches this week.

Topping Beaver's scoring list was junior guard John Foster (Austin/Del Valle) with a game-high 23 points and 14 rebounds followed by PSUAC Player of the Week sophomore forward Andrew Brady (Alliance/Marlington), who contributed 17 points and 11 rebounds, both earning double-doubles for Beaver.

1st half: Fayette won the ball first but missed on two early shot attempts from 3-point range. Then Foster won the ball back and got it to Brady, who hit a jumper from downtown to land Beaver on the scoreboard a minute in (3-0). At 18:02, Fayette hit back-to-back 3's to take the lead but it was short lived as Beaver scored 8 unanswered points and take a 6-point lead at 14:27 (12-6). The game stayed within 4 points down the 8-minute mark, but freshman forward/center Jeremy Redwine (Merced) and Foster combined for back-to-back 3's in less than a minute to edge out a double-digit lead for Beaver at 5:57 (26-14). Beaver held Fayette to only 8 points in the remaining minutes of the first, taking a 14-point lead at halftime (36-22).

2nd half: Foster facilitated the scoring in the second with a quick jumper (38-22) on an assist by junior guard Kevin Louis-Charles (Lawrenceville/Central Gwinnett). But Fayette started to pick up stream and soon cut the score down to only 9 points at 15:33 (38-29), but the tables quickly turned as Beaver forged a 12-point run in under four minutes to take over the game and built its largest lead of 21 points at the 11:34 mark (50-29). However, Fayette responded with a 15-3 run of its own to shave the deficit to only 7 points and keep hope alive for a comeback win (53-46). But Fayette turner the ball over, and Brady answered the call on the next possession, sinking a late 3-pointer and then following up with a layup 48 second later to take the lead back up to 10 points (56-46). With only a minute and a half remaining, Fayette ran into foul trouble, affording Beaver five of seven late attempts from the line to which the team hit 5-7 shots and took down Fayette by a final score of 65-50.

Box Score Highlights: Beaver outshot Fayette 46 percent to 38.6 from the field, 61.5 to 29.4 percent from 3-point range and 68.8 percent to 25 percent from the charity stripe. Beaver also outscored Fayette 24-20 on points in the paint, racked up nine more assists and outrebounded Fayette 31-29.

With today's win, Beaver climbs back to the first-place spot in the PSUAC-West standings (6-2) and improve to a 10-4 overall season record. Beaver will head down to Penn State Shenango for more conference action on Tuesday, Jan. 15. Game time is 7 p.m.