Lehigh’s McCollum is too much for Mids on Senior Night
No team in Division I has as many freshmen as Navy. But Wednesday night was all about the Mids’ three seniors. In their final home game, Jordan Sugars, Carlton Smith, and Ted Connolly brought their best stuff to Alumni Hall, but it wasn’t enough to halt the nation’s longest losing streak.
With junior C.J. McCollum scoring a game-high 24 points, Lehigh pulled away in the second half, handing Navy its 20th straight defeat, 58-41, before 2,801.
Sugars scored 13 points, all in the first half. Smith notched 12 points and eight rebounds, both career highs. And Connelly, a future Navy SEAL, hit the first three-pointer of his career and picked up a few more of his customary floor burns.
“The three of us, we were hyped up, ready to do it,” Smith said. “It was a little disappointing not getting the win, but we showed great promise today. To get the win would have been amazing.”
But Navy had no answer for McCollum, the two-time Patriot League player of the year who attracted a handful of NBA scouts. The 6-3 guard used his elegant offensive arsenal to hit 9 of 18 shots as Lehigh (22-7, 9-3) kept pace with Bucknell (20-8, 10-2) and American (18-9, 9-3) at the top of the conference standings.
Meanwhile tough-luck Navy (3-24, 0-13), which has lost five games on shots in the final five seconds, wrapped up last place in the regular season and will travel to the top seed in the conference quarterfinals on Wednesday, seeking its first win in the tournament since the semifinals in 2001, a streak of 11 straight losses.
Inspired by their senior trio, the overmatched Midshipmen led for most of the first 10 minutes and hung tough into the second half. When sophomore Isaiah Roberts (seven points, three steals) hit a runner, it pulled Navy close, 37-34, with 13 minutes left.
But Lehigh answered with a 10-0 run, sparked by three-pointers from B.J. Bailey (11 points) and Mackey McKnight (eight points). On the evening, the duo hit a combined 5 of 6 shots from beyond the arc.
At the other end, Navy struggled, making just two field goals in the final 13 minutes. The Mids hit just 34.1 percent of their shots and got little from their bench. In a combined 71 minutes, the Midshipmen reserves failed to score, missing nine shots from the floor and three from the free-throw line.
“Our starters were solid for us. Our seniors were very, very solid for us. We just didn’t have anything off the bench tonight,” Navy coach Ed DeChellis said. “We ran set, after set, after set, different guys get shots and nobody could put the ball in the basket.”
