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The comeback came up short this time for the Quinnipiac men’s basketball team. On Friday night against Marist the Bobcats could not pull off another comeback like they did last time with the Rider  Broncs, suffering a 63-61 loss. Quinnipiac had the opportunity to tie for first place after Monmouth lost and Canisius won, but let the chance slip away.

Here are three takeaways from the loss:

The Marist defense was a problem for Quinnipiac

It just seemed that Quinnipiac couldn’t get an open shot throughout the game. Marist head coach John Dunne brought his knack of coaching tough defensive teams with him from Saint Peter’s. The Red Foxes held the Bobcats to about 38 percent shooting in the game and Quinnipiac just couldn’t seem to adjust to the Marist defense.

“I think the majority of that game was dominated by Marist’s defensive effort,” head coach Baker Dunleavy said. “I thought they were really on [defense] limiting us to the percentage we shot.”

The one player the Marist defense especially bothered was Rich Kelly who was held scoreless until the last couple minutes of the game when he knocked down two three-pointers. Also, freshman Tyrese Williams struggled with the suffocating Red Fox defense by coughing the ball over five times.

The Quinnipiac bench needs to be better

Seven points. That is all the points the four bench players could muster Friday night. It was an Aaron Robinson three and four points from Travis Atson.

It’s no secret that this team is heavily dependent on what Cam Young does on the floor, but he cannot do it alone especially with a defense like Marist’s. Jacob Rigoni was the next highest scorer with 13 points, but then the next highest scorer after him was Kelly and his two threes late totaling six points.

Kevin Marfo was productive in the 11 minutes he played with the 5 boards he grabbed, but the scoring needed to be better to keep up with Marist and the 40 bench points it had.

Quinnipiac has a flair for the dramatic

 You saw it Tuesday with the game against Rider when Quinnipiac came back late to defeat the Broncs and another comeback fell short tonight.

“That sense of urgency once you’re down,” Dunleavy said. “You play a little more free, looser and a little more aggressive and we needed that aggressiveness early in the game.”

That looser style of play enabled Kelly to get on the board after a scoreless game before that point, and Williams also hit some big shots down the stretch.

Dunleavy also mentioned after the game in these comebacks you need to get a little lucky, and tonight the Bobcats apparently did not. Dunleavy also stated that his squad needed to put this one behind them quickly and start looking forward to Iona on Tuesday.

No Quinnipiac players were made available to the media after the game.

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