Elon Men’s Basketball Surges Past The Citadel

ELON, N.C. – The Elon University men’s basketball team won its second straight league game a 74-65 win over The Citadel on Saturday night, Jan. 11, inside Alumni Gym.

Elon improves to 9-8 on the year (2-1 Southern Conference) with the win and is now 7-1 at home. The Citadel drops to 4-14 (0-3 Southern Conference) with the setback.

“We are pleased with what we consider a very hard fought win,” said Elon head coach Matt Matheny. “We have a lot of respect for The Citadel, they are very difficult to guard, and they have a lot of very talented players. We were far from as good as we wanted to be, but we played with an aggression and I thought we made them work for everything.”

Elon ended the first half on an 11-4 run over the final 2:45 and started the second session on a 10-2 run to take a double-digit with less than 16 minutes remaining, never looking back from that point forward. The Bulldogs pulled no closer than seven points down the stretch, as the Phoenix held on for its second straight league win.

Lucas Troutman led all players with a game-high 19 points on 6-of-13 shooting from the field to go along with a game-high nine boards. Troutman also recorded two blocked shots, moving him into 10th all-time in Southern Conference history in blocked shots.

Sebastian Koch had the hot hand early for the maroon and gold, knocking down four first-half triples. Koch ended the game with 14 points, all of which came in the first 20 minutes. Koch now has 974 career points.

Jack Isenbarger played 24 minutes off the bench and finished with 15 points on 5-of-11 shooting, including a 3-of-7 clip from beyond the arc.

Elon recorded just four turnovers in the win, its lowest total during the Matheny era.

The two teams jockeyed for position in the opening frame, but the Phoenix carried the lead and momentum into the locker rom at intermission after a Troutman dunk with less than 30 seconds to play made it a 36-29 game.

Elon shot 45 percent in the first half, knocking down 6-of-18 from long distance, led by Koch’s five triples.

Austin Hamilton put the Phoenix up by 15 points with 15:57 remaining in the first half after completing an old-fashioned three-point play that gave Elon a 46-31 lead, its largest of the game at that point.

But the Bulldogs managed to narrow the gap, as a Marshall Harris triple with 7:33 left made it a seven-point game, 59-52. That was as close as The Citadel would get, however.

Elon returns to action on Thursday night, Jan. 16, at Davidson. Tip is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Belk Arena.