By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
The Elon men’s basketball team was chasing for most of Thursday night’s game and one of the opposing players leading the charge was a former member of the Phoenix.
Hofstra’s Michael Graham scored 15 points and pulled in 13 rebounds against his former team as the Pride defeated Elon 74-63 in Coastal Athletic Association play at Schar Center.
Reserve T.J. Simpkins’ 18 points and Sam Sherry’s 16 points and 10 rebounds weren’t enough for the Phoenix (14-8 overall, 5-4 CAA), which lost consecutive games for the first time this season.
“Every team gets tested throughout a season,” Elon coach Billy Taylor said. “It’s a long season. It’s a grind of a season. . . Nobody feels sorry for us and we don’t feel sorry for ourselves.”
Cruz Davis led Hofstra (12-10, 6-2) with 18 points and Joshua DeCady, who recorded his first two 3-point baskets of the season, posted 20 points off the bench. Graham, a 6-foot-8 graduate forward, played two seasons for Elon before spending the past two seasons with Loyola Marymount.
Elon made 10 baskets from 3-point range, but shot just 7-for-29 on 2-point attempts,
“We’ve got to improve our shot selection,” Simpkins said. “We (weren’t) getting to our shots in our usual drive-and-kicks, 3s, get to the paint.”
Hofstra drained three 3s in the first four minutes of the second half to extend its lead to 50-37.
Shortly after, Elon’s T.K. Simpkins missed a 3 that would have cut the deficit to four. Instead, the Pride poured in six quick points and went up 58-45.
“Every time we’d score, they’d score,” T.J. Simpkins said of the stalled comeback quest.
Graham’s three-point play off an offensive rebound with 42.9 seconds left made it 72-61. Earlier, Graham’s putback put the Pride up 27-15 as part of his 10-point first half.
Nick Dorn’s corner 3 at the buzzer pulled the Phoenix to within 39-32 at halftime.
Elon ends the four-game homestand Saturday night vs. Northeastern (12-10, 4-5), which won 78-69 at Hampton on Thursday.
“Fixing it is going back to the very basic things,” Taylor said. “What do you do well as a basketball team because you’re not going to reinvent yourself in two days. We’ve played really well and we’ve responded a lot of times this year, now it’s even more of a reason for us to respond.”
