After picking up important Presidents’ Athletic Conference wins over Westminster and Chatham in the previous week, the men’s basketball team took a 27-20 lead into halftime against the top team in the PAC, Thomas More.

The Saints found their rhythm in the second half, however, led by 14 points from junior guard Damion King, and eventually pulled away for a 64-50 win over the Yellow Jackets.

With the loss, the Jackets fell to 9-14 overall and 5-11 in conference play. Waynesburg entered Wednesday’s matchup with Washington & Jefferson two games ahead of Chatham for a conference playoff spot and one game ahead of Thiel for seventh in the PAC.

Thomas More won its 12th straight contest overall, and 13th straight in conference, to improve to 19-4 overall and 15-1 in PAC play, two games ahead of second place Bethany.

For head coach Mark Christner, a poor shooting day was a primary reason for the Jackets not being able to hold on. After Waynesburg shot over 50 percent from the field in its past two games, the Jackets were just 29 percent against the Saints and were 7-27 in the second half.

“I think it was just one of those days,” Christner said. “I think we had some guys under the weather and I thought we were a little low energy overall, to be honest. We had one offensive rebound, which is not typical of us.”

In the first half, Waynesburg was led by freshman guard Matt Popeck who had seven points and was 2-3 from beyond the arc. Junior wing Nate Gearhart and sophomore forward Shane Johnson each contributed six points off the bench, all of which coming via three-pointers. The Jackets held the Saints to just over 28 percent shooting in the first half, and 2-16 from three. Senior Simon Clifford and junior guard Ryne Callahan led Thomas More with six points each in the first 20 minutes. King, who leads the Saints in scoring, was held to two points on just 1-4 from the field in the first half. After halftime, he found his stroke.

King was 5-8 from the field in the second half, and connected on all three of his attempts from beyond the arc. He and Clifford combined to score 25 of Thomas More’s 44 second-half points, shooting 10-14 in the process.

Christner felt King, Clifford and the rest of the Saints were able to find themselves offensively in the second half despite not being a drastic change on defense from the Jackets.

“The biggest difference was that they were able to make a few more shots in the second half,” Christner said. “I’ll be honest; I’m not sure defensively that there was a whole lot changed. I thought overall on defense, we did a lot of the things that we wanted to do. Damion King is a widely regarded player for a reason. [Thomas More’s] ability to have to chip away and get the lead and our inability just to make shots across the board obviously was difficult to overcome.”

With 10:53 remaining, the Jackets tied the game at 38. They wouldn’t score again for over four minutes.

“I thought in that 6-7 minute stretch in the second half, offensively we really got tighter, verses continuing to [spread the floor],” Christner said. “We rely on guys to be able to make jump shots too…guys who have [made shots] for us of late didn’t really make them today.”

For Waynesburg, Popeck and Gearhart tied for the team lead with 11 points. Clifford, King and freshman forward Garren Bertsch led the way with 17, 16 and 10 points, respectively, while King contributed a game-high 11 rebounds.

Although senior wing Jon Knab had a difficult day offensively, being held to eight points – his lowest in PAC play this season and second lowest overall – he reached the 1,000 point milestone. With 10:53 remaining in the game, Knab became the 34th player in school history to score his 1,000th point. For Christner, Knab reaching the plateau was a result of the work he’s put in over his college career.

“It’s really neat,” Christner said. “I think any time you have [a player reach 1,000 points], it’s a culmination of a lot of things. In [Knab’s] case, he just worked really hard to become a pretty quality player in our league, an efficient scorer in our league. He gets everybody’s best defender on him. He gets chased and he gets held and its pretty physical. [He] just really worked his way into being a really efficient scorer.”

Waynesburg’s next contest will be at Washington & Jefferson in a game past this publication date. Now with one game left in the regular season, Christner feels that now is the time for the Jackets to be at their strongest.

“You want to be sharp,” Christner said. “No matter who you play, you want to be sharp this time of year. You want to be feeling like as a team you’re playing your best. I think we’ve had two weeks really of playing well. I didn’t necessarily view today as a major step back in that regard. You just can’t shoot the percentages we shot and expect to come away with a good result. I just don’t think that’s possible against [Thomas More].”