Box Score

AMHERST, MA (January 26, 2010) – A road-weary Vassar men's basketball team, which was playing its seventh straight road game with a depleted roster due to injury, faced the formidable task of playing No. 20 nationally ranked Amherst College on Tuesday evening. Down to just eight healthy players, the Brewers fell to the Lord Jeffs, 88-55, in their final non-league game of the season. 

The Brewers, now 2-14 on the season, will resume Liberty League play this Friday at the Athletics & Fitness Center against Skidmore College at 8:00 p.m. Amherst improves to 13-3 and jumps back into NESCAC play on Friday with a road game against Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. 

Without the services of senior guard Casey Black who was coming off a career-high 16 points against Hamilton on Saturday and freshman guard Jon Herzog, the Brewers faced an uphill climb against a big, deep and talented Amherst team. The Lord Jeffs are perennially one of the nation's top Division III teams with a steep history that includes winning the national championship in 2008 and finishing second in 2007. 

Sophomore guards Nick Justiz and Caleb McGraw, junior center Chris Whitney and freshman forward John Donnelly gave yeoman efforts against an Amherst team that has 17 roster players, 12 of whom are 6-foot-5 and taller. McGraw led the Brewers in scoring with 20 points, 11 coming in the second half and Justiz tallied a career-high 14 points. Battling a plethora of Amherst big men, Whitney earned a career-high four blocks and scored eight points on 3-of-4 shooting from the field. Donnelly had a strong second half with 11 points and a team-leading six rebounds. 

Amherst led from start-to-finish, jumping out to a 10-0 lead with scoring coming from five different Lord Jeffs players. It took the Brewers just under four minutes to get on the scoreboard, a jumper from  Justiz that made the score 10-2. Amherst built a 20-4 lead six minutes into the game. A 3-pointer by McGraw with 12:27 to play helped the Brewers cut the lead to 25-11, but an Amherst team that shot better than 50 percent from the floor in the first half kicked it up a notch and cruised into halftime leading 51-24. 

With the game well in hand, Amherst played its extensive roster in the second half. The Brewers hung tough, only being outscored 37-31, but Amherst simply had too much firepower for a Brewers team that continued to play hard throughout. 

The Lord Jeffs, who shot better than 50 percent from the field and from 3-point range, had a balanced attack led by sophomore guard Taylor Barrise with 14 points, senior guard Steven Wheeler with 13 and freshman guard Allen Williamson with 10. Sophomore forward Jeff Holmes had six rebounds and DJ Carcieri added five.