The Riverhawks men’s basketball team have lost six games in a row and are now 1-7 this season after the 97-59 loss to the Montgomery Community College Raptors on Saturday. 

Riverhawks guard Jack Taylor hit four 3-pointers. He pitched in 14 points and three rebounds. Guard Truth Norton added 15 points, four rebounds and three assists. 

Guard Michael Duffy, who had four points, three rebounds and two assists, hit a go-ahead jump shot with 14 seconds to go, which put Riverhawks on top 39-38 to end the first half. In the first 10 minutes of the second half, the Riverhawks were outscored 26-7 by the Raptors. 

During that 10-minute span, Taylor, a second-year transfer studies student, said the team’s “communication just wasn’t there on defense. … They came out and hit a few shots to start the half and then we kind of just lost energy on the defensive end.”

Riverhawks head men’s basketball coach Joe Snowden said the team “disappeared.” 

“We didn’t score [for several] minutes,” Snowden said. “That’s unusual [and we have] good offensive players and not having [shooting guard] Scoob [Stroman] hurts us, but [we] could have done better.”

In the six games Stroman has played in—he has averaged 17 points, 5.8 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game. 

Snowden added the team needs to “finish games.”

“It’s not like the teams we played with are that much better than us,” Snowden noted. “Instead we collapsed when we shouldn’t have collapsed.”

Forward Malik Carroll agreed.

“We got to play [the] entire game,” Caroll, a first-year nursing student, said. 

Raptors guard and forward Marquise Trent shot 7 of 11 from the field. Trent led the team with 21 points, three rebounds and five assists. Guard Marcus Rodgers scored 13 points with two rebounds and assists. Forward William Tchatchoua, who shot 71% from the court, added 12 points and eight rebounds. 

Trent, a second-year general studies student, said the team came out flat in the beginning.

“Coach [Jamaal Wise] got on us and basically told us to lock down on defense,” Trent said. “We came out [in the] second half … way more energetic and we came out and got the win.”

Tchatchoua, a first-year business student, agreed.

“We made some adjustments that we need[ed] to make,”  Tchatchoua said. “And we came out and performed like how I think we should always perform.”

The Riverhawks will travel to New Jersey and face the Rowan College South Jersey Roadrunners on Nov. 22 at 8 p.m. The Raptors next game is on Nov. 30 against the Hagerstown Community College Hawks at 7:30 p.m.