DAYTON, Ohio — Dola Adebayo and Jedy Cordilia each scored 22 points to help Mount St. Mary’s hold off American 83-72 on Wednesday night in a First Four victory.
Dallas Hobbs added 17 for the Mountaineers (23-12), who advance as a No. 16 seed to play top-seeded Duke in a first-round East Region contest Friday in Raleigh, N.C.
Geoff Sprouse had 18 points while Elijah Stephens added 12 for American (22-13), which saw its four-game win streak come to an end. The Eagles lost leading scorer Matt Rogers to a first-half knee injury.
Cordilia had 16 points on 8-of-9 shooting in the first half for Mount St. Mary’s and finished the game 10 of 11 from the floor. Hobbs had 15 first-half points, including a buzzer-beating three that capped a 9-2 Mount St. Mary’s run for a 48-38 lead at halftime.
“Yeah, that was crazy, just to see how the ball was flying around, this man hitting crazy step-backs,” Adebayo said of Cordilia. “But that’s normal for him at this point. I was just proud of how our guys went out there and performed today. It was great.”
Mount St. Mary’s appeared to put the game away with a string of seven straight baskets, including a pair of thunderous dunks from Dola Adebayo that stretched the lead to 79-60 with 6:03 remaining.
A 9-0 spurt got American within 81-73 with 3:20 remaining before American coach Duane Simpkins was called for a technical with 2:29 remaining. American never scored again.
Both teams displayed sharp-shooting skills, with Mount St. Mary’s making 30 of their first 48 shots and finishing at 57.7 percent. American shot 47.4 percent.
Rogers went down multiple times in the first half then collided with Cordilia with 5:28 left before halftime. Rogers, with his right knee already in a sleeve, needed assistance getting off the court and was unable to return.
Rogers, who led American at 17.0 points per game, returned to the bench in the second half on crutches.
“As you can see, I tried to give it my all tonight,” Rogers said. “I feel like I still had a lot left in my heart for these guys because y’all don’t know what goes into this process of being a college basketball player. It’s really hard. … I wish I could have done more for us, for the AU community, because they deserved an NCAA win. But I fell short today.”
After back-to-back 3-pointers from Greg Jones and Matt Mayock drew American within 56-51 with 15:11 left, the Mountaineers answered with a 12-0 spurt that featured 3-pointers from Arlandus Keyes and Malcolm Dread.
–By Mike Petraglia, Field Level Media
