The Lenoir-Rhyne Men’s Basketball Team suffered their fifth straight loss after a 73-68 defeat to visiting Limestone on Wednesday night inside Shuford Arena. The Bears have lost their last five games by a total of just 21 points. L.J. McCoy had his sixth 20-point game of the year as McCoy scored 22 points and T.J. Newsmith added 20 points and five rebounds in the losing effort.

The home team jumped out to an early 7-2 lead as the Bears hit their first three shots of the game. McCoy’s third three-pointer of the first half give the Bears a 13-4 lead with 15:10 left. After another McCoy basket to give the Bears a 20-13 lead, the Saints went on a 8-2 run to cut the lead to 22-21.

The Bears did take a 31-29 lead into intermission as the Bears shot 46% from the floor in the first half. McCoy had 16 of the Bears 31 points in the half. The tide turned quickly in the second half as Limestone took the lead for good with a three-pointer from Ben Gahlert with 17:23 left to go.

Limestone lead by as many as seven in the second half as the Bears did cut the lead to one possession at 63-60 with 3:23 but Gahlert drained another three pointer to stretch the lead back to six. The Saints went 13-14 from the free throw line including 8-9 in the second half as Limestone put the game away late from the charity stripe. The Bears struggled on the glass as LR was a -17 on the night as Saints out rebound the Bears 41-24 including 14 offensive rebounds.

Both teams leading scorer had 22 points and their second leader scored had 20 points as Zeb Graham had 22 points for the Saints and Gahlert added 20 including the two big three-pointers in the second half. McCoy lead the Bears with 22 and Nesmith had 20 points as Malik LeGania added 11 points.

The Bears went twelve deep in the rotation tonight but only had eight bench points on the evening while the Saints went eight deep and had 19 bench points. LR only got to the free-throw line two times in the first half missing both shots but went 12-16 from the line in the second half.

Lenoir-Rhyne drops to 8-12 overall, 3-9 in the South Atlantic Conference. The Bears will travel to Mars Hill for a 4:00 tip on Saturday afternoon.