Setters Fall to New Haven as Losing Skid Reaches Four Games
There have been bumps in the road all season for the Pace University men’s basketball team. But now they’re appearing with alarming frequency.
basket blocked by a pair of New Haven defenders
during Sunday night’s game. Photo by Andy Jacobs
“Yeah, we’re having a hard time getting over the hump,” conceded Setters coach Jim Harter late Sunday evening after his team had fallen to visiting New Haven 62-52 in an NE-10 game at the Goldstein Fitness Center. Senior guard Jeremy Williams erupted for 15 of his game-high 20 points in the second half and the Chargers never trailed all night, sending Pace to its fourth consecutive defeat and seventh in the last nine games.
“We’re just not getting enough guys stepping up and doing what we need to do,” said a clearly frustrated Harter. “I don’t know what else to say.”
The Setters, now 9-12 overall and 6-11 in the conference, found themselves trailing by 10 points just five minutes into the game against a New Haven team that had handed them their worst defeat of the season one month earlier. Pace managed to tie the contest at 2-2 on a Jonathan Merceus baseline jumper, but once Williams connected on a left-side 3-pointer nearly three minutes after the opening tip to break the game’s only tie, the Chargers had the lead for good.
Pace made just 11 of its 31 shots from the field in the opening half, but center Keon Williams provided six successive baskets for the Setters over a seven-minute span. Five of his buckets came during a 12-4 run that enabled the Setters to get within 24-18 with three and a half minutes left before halftime. New Haven scored the last four points before intermission and took a 30-23 lead into the locker room.
“They were beatable tonight,” said Harter of the 14-7 Chargers. “We just didn’t get it done. We didn’t step up and make enough plays and execute well enough and get it done on either end the way we needed to to compete in a game like this.”
Merceus, the junior forward leading the Setters in scoring, was limited to just two points in 12 first-half minutes after collecting a pair of fouls. When the second half began, he promptly picked up his third within 40 seconds.
“He was struggling all night playing with fouls and all that,” said Harter, “and just trying to do a little too much in the first half. But it’s just one of those things. We needed him in the game and he had to leave it for about 10 minutes.”
But Merceus did supply four baskets early in the second half and when freshman forward Jaylen Mann made a 3-pointer nearly seven minutes in, the Setters had moved within 41-36. A minute and a half later, though, Merceus was whistled for his fourth foul and headed for the bench.
Despite his absence, Pace inched even closer, getting within three points on a Williams layup with seven minutes remaining. The Chargers’ Williams hit his fourth 3-pointer of the game with 5:25 to go, extending New Haven’s lead to 54-46. Then with two minutes on the clock, he drove to the basket and scored on a shot high off the glass that enabled New Haven to maintain its eight-point advantage. The Setters never got closer than six points after that as Justin Exum and Eric Anderson each converted both ends of their 1-and-1 free-throw opportunities in the game’s final moments.
“We’re struggling to score this year,” said Harter. “We just don’t have enough scoring and our defense has to be pretty perfect the way we’re scoring the ball this year, and it hasn’t been that. So it’s ended up being a lot of losses.”
Aside from Williams, who led Pace with 19 points and 11 rebounds, the only other Setter to reach double figures was Merceus with 12 points. Mann provided seven points off the bench, but Denzel Primus-Devonish finished with just five, shooting 2 for 11 from the floor, though he didn’t turn the ball over even once in his 35 minutes running the team.
“He’s wearing out,” said Harter of his lightning-quick point guard, whom he summoned to the bench just three minutes into the second half. “I didn’t think he was playing with his normal spunk that he does and I don’t know what it is. Maybe he’s just tired at this point of the year or whatever.”
With the regular season coming to an end in a couple of weeks, Harter isn’t quite sure what his team has to do to put an end to its recent woes.
“I think everybody’s frustrated,” he said. “What can you say? I don’t know, we’ve just gotta hang in there. I mean we’re down to five games and right now we’re not heading in the right direction. But if you can come out and win a game, then you never know. Maybe you can get your spirits back and all that, but right now we’re really struggling.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
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