Saint Leo Men’s basketball rolled ahead for their fourth straight win on January 19. Saint Leo now improves to 8-9 and 5-4 in the SSC. They are one game out of finally being .500 where they hope to continue the streak and get into the positives. The Lions came out red hot scoring early and fast to get to an incredible lead of 14-2. This lead increased a little and the time was stopped at 11:36. Junior guard Isaiah Hill, sophomore guard Gintaras Bartaskas, and senior guard Daniel Duarte went off from down town scoring on 8-10 shots. Bartaskas went a perfect 4-4 as the Lions shot an incredible 10-13 for 76 percent in the first half. Within a one-minute span Duarte went 3-3 to push the Lions ahead to a ridiculous 33-16 score with 7:06 left to play in the first half. The last play of the half was an assist where Duarte found senior forward Junior Searcy for a two-handed slam with 29 seconds left to give the lions a 53-38 lead.
The second half started with Barry making a free throw, however, the Lions answered with a three pointer on the other side of the floor. Barry eventually gained a small roll cutting the lead down to 10 making the score 64-54. The Lions never gave up as they pushed the lead to 14 again. The Bucs kept fighting as they cut the lead to nine until junior forward Tyler Carter’s free throws made it back to double digits. Despite the Bucs efforts Saint Leo stood tall and they continued to push on. The final score was 82-77 giving them their fourth straight win. Junior guard Kyran McClure lead the Lions in points with 17 including going 10-12 from the free throw line. This is not to take the light away from Bartaskas’ great game where he had a career high 14 points while not missing a three pointer and going 2-2 from the free throw line. As a team the Lions shot a season best 55% from the three-point line going 11-20. The Lions finished the game shooting .521 from the field going 25-48. They also went .750 from the charity stripe sinking 21-28 shots. They had 25 rebounds which was 4 more than Barry.
