Box Score Canton, NY – The D'Youville men's basketball team suffered their fourth loss of the season on Sunday afternoon to the SUNY Canton Kangaroos by the final score of 82-68.
The teams' leading scorer, Marcus Clarke (Olean, NY/Archbishop Walsh), began the scoring for the Spartans with a three-pointer just over 2 minutes into the game. D'Youville took over the lead at 8-6 with 4:28 elapsed in the game as Jeremy VanDuluitgaarden (Oneida, NY/ Venron-Verona-Sherill) hit a three-pointer. The Kangaroos tied the game at 16-16 with 11:28 remaining in half, and then took the lead 19 seconds later.
Canton would open up a 24-16 lead but D'Youville would come back to tie the game thanks to back-to-back three-pointers from VanDuluitgaarden and Steve Kunelius (Oswego, NY/Oswego) followed by a Juan Miguel Rosales (Guatemala City, Guatemala/Village School) made layup. The Kangaroos would take a 32-30 lead with 2:39 remaining in the first half and hold their lead to halftime, leading the Spartans 34-30.
D'Youville's deficit would increase to 9 after Canton would score the first two baskets of the second half. Senior and captain Jon Gemerek (Cheektowaga, NY/Depew) hit 2 free throws and got the Spartans back to within 5 points, but the Kangaroos would extend their lead to 9 with 15:09 left in the game.
Zach Blask (Portville, NY/Portville) hit a three-pointer with 4:52 to go in the game and the D'Youville deficit was brought to 9, but that would be the closest that the Spartans would come to the lead for the remainder of the game. SUNY Canton would finish the game and win by the final of 82-68.
"It was a disappointing second half," said Head Coach Earl Schunk. "We couldn't seem to get a stop or a bucket when we needed it," Schunk continued.
For the second consecutive game, Jeremy VanDuluitgaarden was the team's leading scorer. The freshman had 15 points in his first start of the season to go along with 3 rebounds. Marcus Clarke added 10 points with 4 rebounds and a steal. Juan Rosales was the team's leading rebounder off the bench with 8 and the Guatemala native added 9 points.
Sophomore Zach Blask led the team with 5 assists and was 3-5 from behind the arc. Jon Gemerek, Steve Kunelius, Jake Socha (Tonawanda, NY/Niagara Catholic) and Nate Sweetman (Johnstown, NY/Johnstown) all had 6 points in the game.
Coach Schunk looks to take the positive things out of the team's loss and hopes to improve heading into conference play.
"On the positive side, we showed enough good things that we can be really good if we get consistent."
The men will return home for their first conference game on Wednesday, December 2nd at 6pm against the Penn State-Behrend Lions.
