Box Score It was a tale of two halves for the McMaster men’s basketball team on Saturday, as the Marauders rallied from a 4-point halftime deficit to defeat the Brock Badgers 94-75 at Marauder Weekend.

No doubt pumped up from the crowd that came out for Mac’s winter homecoming, the Marauders jumped out to a 10-2 lead to start the game, before Brock called a timeout to stem the Maroon momentum.

The Badgers then got some solid play from Jameson Tipping and Mark Gibson to narrow the gap and by the end of the first quarter McMaster was in front by a single hoop at 19-17.

In the second quarter, Brock got a tremendous spark from rookie guard Issack Egueh off the bench.  Attacking the basket and shooting from outside, Eguah made all six of his field goal attempts, including a perfect 3 for 3 from beyond the arc.  His 17 first half points and the continued strong play of Gibson allowed the Badgers to carry a 45-41 lead into intermission.

But Marauder Weekend usually gets the men in Maroon fired up and they came out in the third quarter and scored the first nine points to retake the lead.  The lead continued to grow and reached 13 points before two late baskets by the Badgers saw the quarter end with Mac on top 70-60.

The fourth quarter saw McMaster’s Taylor Black take over as he nailed two long threes and added a deuce to key a run that saw the Marauder lead balloon to 87-65 midway through the final quarter.  Fouls became an issue for Brock as Gibson picked up a personal and a technical on the same play and had to head to the bench.   Not able to generate a comeback run of their own, the Badgers saw McMaster take time off the clock, while getting scoring from a variety of players to close out the win.

Over the final two quarters, McMaster outscored the Badgers 53-30.

Taylor Black was the top scorer for Mac with 22 points.  After missing all four of his 3-point attempts in the first half, Black came back to make all three of his trifectas in the second half.  Joe Rocca, who has been shooting the ball well scored 18, Nathan McCarthy had a double-double with 13 points and 11 boards.  Scott Laws with 13 and Aaron Redpath with 10 also hit double figure scoring.  Brock was led by Issack Egueh with 19 for the game, but only two in the second half.

Now with an 8 and 7 record in the OUA West, McMaster travels to Laurier on Wednesday, January 30 for an 8 pm tip-off  with the Golden Hawks.