Flat Falcons Continue Home Woes.

The Notre Dame Falcons (9-16 4-9 AMC) lost for the sixth straight time at Murphy Gym a 92-82 loss to Mount Vernon Nazarene (15-11 8-6 AMC).

The Falcons looked like a completely different team than the one that took #1 Walsh down to the wire Saturday. The Falcons just could not get anything going, and had a very poor defensive effort on Tuesday night. The Falcons had three players score double figures on Tuesday. Eric Dummermuth and Curtis McClure paced the Falcons with 17 points each. Taylor Reiger also netted 16. The Falcons shot 49% from the floor while hitting 5 of 15 from three point land. NDC was 23-29 (79%) at the free throw line. The Falcons easily won the boards battle 34-22. NDC had 11 turnovers and just 6 assists.

The Cougars remained in the hunt for the final playoff spot in the AMC. Robbie Taylor was red hot from long range and paced the Cougars with 25 points. Taylor was 6-10 from three point land and also added 5 assists. Brandon Short added 22 points. Short was 6-9 from the field and hit 10 of 11 at the charity stripe. Caleb Williams added 16 on 7 of 8 shooting. He was 2 of 3 at the foul line. The Cougars had a fantastic shooting night. They shot 60% from the floor (33-55), hit 56% from three (9-16) and were 17-23 (74%) from the foul line. Mount Vernon had just 7 turnovers to go along with 16 assists.

The game started with a very sparse crowd due to the unusual 5:30 start time. The attendance ended up being 177. The teams came out trading buckets for most of the first half. It was tied at 22 after a McClure jumper with 6:37 in the opening half. The Cougars then went on a 10-0 run after a Short jumper with 3:13 in the half. Curtis McClure electrified the crowd with a dunk that cut the lead to 8. The Cougars would lead 36-29 going into the intermission.

The Falcons got the lead down to 5 on a pair of occasions early in the second half but Mount Vernon Nazarene would push the lead back to 12 (51-39) on a pair of Taylor treys with 16:30 to go. The Falcons would get the lead down to 4 (60-56) on a Phil Biggs triple with 10:41 to go. The Falcons would get it down to four two more times on a Taylor Rieger three and another jumper by Reiger but that is as close as they would get.

The Falcons will be back in action Thursday evening when they welcome Cedarville (13-11 8-5 AMC) to Murphy gym. The tip will be at 7:30.