The University of La Verne could not overcome a cold shooting night and a surging Occidental College squad as the Leopards suffered a 61-49 defeat to the Tigers in SCIAC action Wednesday night at Frantz Athletic Court.
La Verne (12-9, 7-3 SCIAC) dropped from a first-place tie in the SCIAC standings to third after co-leaders Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Redlands each earned road wins on Wednesday night.
The Tigers pulled away from the Leopards with a decisive 8-0 run with six minutes remaining to turn a tight 42-40 lead into a comfortable 50-40 cushion with 3:40 remaining to play. The Leopards would not get within eight points the rest of the game.
Occidental (11-10, 5-5 SCIAC) continued its role as giant killers in the conference, winning its third in a row to move to .500 in the league standings after a 0-4 start. Oxy has topped Redlands, CMS and La Verne - all SCIAC co-leaders in consecutive games to move into a tie for fourth place.
Oxy never trailed in the first half and led by as many as nine points in the opening 20 minutes before taking a 26-19 advantage on the Leopards into intermission.
The Leopards surged to begin the second half, opening with a 7-0 run to tie the game at 26-26 on a layup from Tyler Hoyt at the 17:34 mark. La Verne took its first and only lead of the night on a jumper from Austin Napolitano to give the Leos a 30-28 advantage with 15:05 remaining.
Oxy reclaimed the lead with five straight points to go up 33-30 with 14:17 left to play, and continued to hold a slight edge on the Leopards before its late-game surge to push the advantage to double-digits.
Deshun McCoy scored a team-high 16 points for the Tigers while Jake Copithorne and Drew Dockweiler each posted 10 points.
Hoyt paced the La Verne offense with a career-high 20 points on 8-15 shooting from the field. Outside of Hoyt, the Leos combined to make just nine of 33 field goal attempts on the evening as the Tigers held their fifth straight opponent to 55 points or less. La Verne struggled from three-point range, making just two of 12 attempts (16.7%) from beyond the arc.
Napolitano added 13 points along with a team-high 9 rebounds while Trevor Woodland tallied 9 points.
La Verne continues conference action this Saturday as it faces off against SCIAC co-leader Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in a 7:00 pm tip-off.
