WENHAM, Massachusetts—A rally as time expired propelled Gordon College past the Falcon men's basketball team 80-77 Tuesday night.
Big leads were hard to come by throughout the contest with both teams coming out shooting from the tip.
Noah Szilagyi (Highlands Ranch, Colorado) scored six of Gordon's first 10 points to grab a 10-9 lead over the visiting Falcons. However, Tyler Shular (Norwalk, Connecticut) countered with a pair of buckets of his own, including a deep three to give Fisher a 16-12 advantage.
After another deep ball from the Scots closed the gap to one point, Fisher opened its biggest lead of the game with a 13-3 run over the next five minutes.
Tyree Gross (West Roxbury, Massachusetts) hit a three with 7:46 left in the first half to give the Falcons a 29-18 lead.
The three ball was kind to the Scots down the stretch as a hat-trick of threes brought Gordon all the way back to a 33-33 tie before a layup by Garrisson Duvivier (Brockton, Massachusetts) again took the lead from the Falcons.
Gordon and Fisher traded points the rest of the half, and the Scots led 39-37 at the break.
Fisher flashed a more active offense coming out of the break and retook a four-point advantage just four minutes into the second half.
However two consecutive threes from another Gordon freshman, Jake Haar (Huntington Beach, California) secured a 58-53 lead for Gordon with 10:58 to play in regulation. It would be Gordon's largest lead of the game.
The Falcons capitalized on turnovers over the next few minutes of play. A fast break dunk by Shular off a nice steal gave the Falcons an eight-point lead with just over four to play.
However, a technical foul following the jam sparked a five-point run for Gordon.
Fisher's Darrel Grady (Staten Island, New York) answered with an easy layup on a shake-and-bake play in the middle with 3:02 remaining to seemingly ice the game for the Falcons at 77-71.
Unfortunately, Gordon's freshman shooting guard, Demers, got hot as time wound down. He nailed a triple in transition just seconds after Grady's lay in and got loose again with 46 ticks on the clock to tie the game at 77.
Grady missed a layup with 23 seconds and Yang secured the rebound drawing a foul from Shular. The sophomore point guard made both shots from the charity stripe, and Gordon survived to steal a 80-77 game from the Falcons.
Shular led all scorers with 31 points and six steals. Penn notched 12 points and five rebounds at one of the other guard spots. Big man Rashid Mahboub (West Roxbury, Massachusetts) had 11 rebounds off the bench. Grady contributed eight points and a team-high seven assists.
All five Gordon starters were in double-figure scoring with Demers leading the charge at 19.
With the loss, Fisher falls to 2-1, while Gordon improves to 2-0.
Fisher has a week off before going to Emerson on Nov. 24 at 7 p.m. Gordon will travel to MIT on Thursday for a 7 p.m. tip.