UVU Wolverines snap losing streak

OREM — Utah Valley's men's basketball team snapped a four-game losing streak Thursday night with a 65-57 Great West Conference victory over NJIT.

Jordan Swarbrick led the Wolverines with 13 points, while Kevin Woods and Shawn Deadwiler had 12 and 10 points, respectively. Jourdain Scoubes and Justin Baker led the Wolverines with six rebounds each.

UVU increased its seven-point halftime lead to nine points on a 12-foot jumper by Woods to open the second half before the Highlanders ended their six-minute scoring drought with five straight points to cut the UVU lead to four with 17:36 left.

The Wolverines answered with an 11-0 run, fueled in part by four straight points from Scoubes and a steal and layup and a jumper by Eric Dearden, to increase the lead to 15 at 38-23 with 12 minutes remaining.

Utah Valley led by as many as 20 points in the second half on a 3-pointer by Deadwiler. The Highlanders got the UVU lead down to as few as seven with less than a minute left in the contest.

"NJIT really had their way with us at their place. They had us by 22 points at halftime," UVU head coach Dick Hunsaker said. "Our game plan was to come in and work hard defensively and take care of the ball. We had a tremendous amount of energy for the majority of the game."

With the win, the Wolverines improve to 12-16 overall and conclude conference play at 5-7, while the Highlanders fall to 9-18 overall and 4-6 in league play. The Wolverines are currently in fifth place in the league standings and could move as high as fourth, depending on how NJIT does in its final two conference games at Chicago State and South Dakota.

NJIT scored the first five points of the game and took the Wolverines more than 10 minutes to recover. Swarbrick drilled a 3-pointer, and Woods hit a driving layup to tie the score at 14-14 with 7:37 left in the half.

NJIT bounced back and took the lead at 18-17 with 4:30 left in the half, but the Wolverines responded with an 8-0 run to end the half to lead 25-18.

Aaron England connected on a jumper, Baker scored a layup, Swarbrick hit two free throws and Tyray Petty scored a lay-up in the run.

Neither team shot particularly well in the first half with UVU shooting 37.5 percent from the field, and NJIT shot 31.8 percent.

For the game, Utah Valley shot 42.9 percent from the field, while NJIT shot 41.2 percent. UVU outrebounded the Highlanders 32-30.