The season is over.

Waynesburg University men’s basketball team traveled to face the Bethany Bison Tuesday. It was the first round of the Presidents Athletic Conference tournament and the Yellow Jackets were defeated.

The Jackets however, put up a fight before Bethany was able to close out a 82-73 victory. According to head coach Mark Christner, the team responded well throughout the game.

“I thought we really battled back,” said Christner. “We wanted to put game pressure on them and we did.”

The night started off well for the Jackets and were able to jump out with a lead thanks to senior forward Marcus Wallace.

Wallace scored six points in that run and finished the night with 15 total.

The Yellow Jackets faced a tough opponent in Bethany, especially against senior guard Calique Jones.

Jones is the leading scorer in the PAC, averaging just under 19 points per game.

Christner however, thought his team played Jones well.

“I thought we did a really good job on him,” said Christner. “I thought we made things difficult for him, he didn’t get a lot of easy shots, but he still made them.”

At the end of the first half, Jones made a deep 3- pointer to give the Bison a 39-27 lead.

In the second half, the Jackets didn’t give up. Despite having a slow start to the game, senior wing Jon Knab helped his team battle back.

“I thought he had a great second half,” said Christner. “I think part of the slow start was getting two fouls, and he hasn’t had a lot of foul trouble.”

Knab contributed 10 points to the cause over his 23 minutes of play.

Other notable performers that helped the team battle back were freshman Matt Popeck who chipped in 12 points as well as five rebounds and senior Kendall Paige also added 8 points and 6 rebounds.

The team was lead in rebounding by freshman Ben Vitovitch and senior Mike Nugent who grabbed nine and eight rebounds, respectively.

“[Nugent] was awesome, he had seven offensive rebounds in that game,” said Christner.

Staying alive on the boards was a saving grace for the team according to Christner.

“I thought we were really good on the boards all the way through, absolutely it kept us in the game,” said Christner.

With just over four minutes left in regulation junior Clay Carper was able to sink two free throws to bring the game within one basket, 68-65, but ultimately that would be as close as the Jackets would get for the rest of the game.

Christner was still pleased with the effort from his team and thought they illustrated the program well.

“I’m proud of our group,” said Christner. “I think they represented our program and our University well because that was a fight and I thought we played really hard.”

The Yellow Jackets finish the season with a 10-16 overall record and 6-12 record in the conference.