Staten Island, NY  |  The College of Staten Island Men's Basketball team could not recover from a poor start in their game against Brooklyn this afternoon, suffering their fourth loss in their last five games by a final score of 77-60.  The Dolphins fall to 5-10 following the defeat while the Bulldogs win for the third time in four games to improve to 4-8.

The two teams went back-and-forth during the game's first five minutes with the Dolphins holding an 8-7 advantage just over four minutes into the game.  However, this would be the last time that CSI would lead as the Bulldogs went on to score the next 16 points, nine coming on threes by Michael Tesoriero.  The resulting 23-8 deficit put the Dolphins in an early hole that they would have trouble climbing out of as they would not get any closer than twelve through the remainder of the half.

Meanwhile, Tesoriero and Anthony McClean led the Bulldogs offense to a 43-point first half in which they knocked down eight of their sixteen attempts from downtown.  They also won the rebounding battle 21-16 and hit seven-of-eight free-throws.  For the Dolphins, Joseph Zieris had 6 points on 3-4 shooting with no other CSI player scoring more than 4 points in a half which saw the team shoot 38% from the field.  The Dolphins also did not hit a single free-throw in the first twenty minutes and only attempted a single shot from the charity stripe.

The Dolphins would fall behind by as many as 21 in the second half before slowly working their way back into the game.  An Adeola Latunji three-pointer cut the deficit down to seventeen before two straight makes by Rigaud Destime brought CSI within fourteen.  A pair of costly turnovers allowed Brooklyn to extend the lead back to seventeen before seven straight Dolphins' points, six coming on consecutive three-pointers by Destime, cut the lead down to ten, 56-46.

Trailing by ten, CSI turned to Zieris who trimmed the lead to single-digits with a strong finish at the rim.  However, the CSI momentum was momentarily slowed by a 6-0 Bulldogs run to put Brooklyn back in front by fourteen, but he Dolphins would not go down quietly.  Once again it was Zieris, who was coming off of a stellar performance on Wednesday, that reduced the Brooklyn lead to single digits with five straight points to make it 62-53.  The CSI scoring run would not end there as an emphatic put-back dunk by Latunji reduced the deficit to seven.

The Latunji dunk ignited the crowd, but this is where the comeback attempt would come to an end.  The Bulldogs scored the next ten points and would go on to take the victory by seventeen, 77-60.  McClean scored 23 for the Bulldogs on 7-12 from the field and 3-6 from beyond the arc while Tesoriero hit 4-8 from deep and scored 14 points on 5-10 shooting.  Zieris, Destime, and Latunji all scored double-digits with 16,14, and 12 with 7, 7, and 8 rebounds respectively.  Unfortunately for CSI, most of their scoring came when the team was playing from behind in the second half as they attempted to recover from a nineteen-point halftime deficit.

The Dolphins are back in action on Wednesday night in the second half of a doubleheader against Lehman College.  The women get things started against the Lightning at 5:30 with the men's game to follow.

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