ALBANY, NY – Monmouth University Men's Basketball (13-20) is on to the MAAC semifinals after a dominating second half, beating Quinnipiac (16-14) 98-92 to top the third-seeded Bobcats on Saturday night. A whopping seven Hawks scored in double figures, including Mustapha Traore (Philadelphia, PA/Phelps School) who netted a career-best 19 points in the victory.

The biggest stretch of the game was a 14-0 Monmouth run over a 3:17 stretch in the middle part of the second half to turn a five-point deficit into a nine-point lead. After Cameron Young answered with a triple, MU scored the next six to extend the lead to 12, and were up as many as 14 with 2:22 to play after two Diago Quinn (New York, NY/Lake Forest Academy) free throws. QU used a late 8-0 run to make it a six-point game, but transition buckets from Nick Rutherford (Indianapolis, IN/Allen/Florida Atlantic) and Traore sealed it for MU.

Both teams came out in the first half hot from the floor, but nobody led by more than five for the bulk of the period. In a half that saw five ties, MU took a six-point edge in the final 3:00 before late Young foul shots cut it back to two. With three seconds to work with, Ray Salnave (Elmont, NY/Benjamin N. Cardozo) got to the wing and drilled a buzzer-beating three to send MU in up five.

NOTES AND QUOTES
"This is the first time we've beaten them since Baker's been the coach, and it took a magnificent effort from my guys to get it done. Today was our day. We tried to take the ball of out of Cameron Young's hands, but Cam still got us for 33 so that's a credit to him. Our guys kept fighting." – Head Coach King Rice

"We did a good job of staying composed and not letting their guys going off affect us in a negative way. That had happened to us in the past, but every dead ball and every time out we were just telling each other that we need to stay together and just work harder at making sure we contest their shots. Like Coach said, how hard we played was going to determine the game and I thought we played extremely hard tonight." – Guard Ray Salnave

-Monmouth advances to the MAAC semifinals for the fourth time in six seasons in the league, and fourth time in the last five years.
-Monmouth's 98 points was a season high as well as the most since February 13, 2017 when MU scored 102. That game was also played at the Times Union Center, a regular season win over Siena.
-Mustapha Traore scored a career-high 19 points on a career-best eight made field goals.
-Monmouth's 50 first-half points were the most MU scored in a half this season.
-MU's 48 second-half points tied the most the Hawks scored in the final 20 minutes this season.
-MU made 35 field goals, a season best, while shooting a season-high 55.6% from the floor.
-The 55.6% from the field is the highest in an MU win since 1/5/18 vs. Manhattan.
-King Rice is now 6-5 all time in MAAC Tournament games.
-The Hawks put seven players in double figures for the first time all season, with seven of the nine players to see action scoring in double digits.
-King Rice picked up his 130^th career win to move into sole possession of fourth place all time at Monmouth, passing Hall of Famer Ron Kornegay.
-The Hawks snap a three-game losing streak vs. the Bobcats.

NUMBERS CRUNCH
-The game featured a whopping 10 ties and 21 lead changes.
-Monmouth outshot QU 55.6% to 49.1%.
-The Hawks dominated in points in the paint (42-16), fast break points (16-0), and bench points (32-12).
-MU outrebounded QU 31-30.
-Only one Hawk played over 30 minutes, with Ray Salnave totaling 30:38.
-Cameron Young led all scorers with 33 points in the loss, while Jacob Rigoni also added 30.

UP NEXT
-Monmouth will face the #2 seed Canisius tomorrow night at 8:30 p.m. on ESPNU.