Box Score  

WILLIMANTIC, Conn. – Junior guard Ray Carter (Springfield, MA) scored 15 of his season-high 21 points that set the tone in a 51-point first half and senior forward Julian Sanchez (Willimantic) came off the bench for 18 points,  six rebounds and two blocks to power the Eastern Connecticut State University men's basketball team to a 95-82 non-conference victory over Connecticut College Tuesday evening at Francis E. Geissler Gymnasium.
 
Carter, a first-year transfer from Anna Maria College, led five double-digit scorers for Eastern (4-1), which posted its highest point total in the 35-game history of the series. The Warriors shot a blistering 63.3 percent from the floor in racing to an 18-point, 51-33 halftime lead (its most points in a half this year), and maintained a double-digit lead throughout the second half in defeating Conn (3-1) for the 12^th time in the last 16 games in the series.
 
Averaging 12 three-point field goals and shooting 44 percent from beyond the arc in its three wins, Conn was limited to only six three-pointers on 29 percent shooting from distance by Eastern's aggressive perimeter defense. The Camels were 2-of-10 from distance in the second half when Eastern  built its lead to as many as 23 points, 63-40, five minutes after the break.
 
The Warriors outscored Conn by 27 points from the floor and by 15 from beyond the arc, with the Camels sinking 26 of 36 free throws that kept them in  contention throughout most of the game.
 
The game marked the third time this year that Eastern has scored more than 90 points – the 95 points representing a season-high. Eastern was coming off its first loss of the season, 99-69, at No. 1 nationallly-ranked and defending Division III champion Trinity College.
 
Conn got to as close as 13 points three times in the second half. Holding to that 13-point lead with just a minute left, the Warriors broke the Conn College press and senior guard Javontae Jones (Lumberton, NJ) found Carter in the corner for his fifth and final three-point field goal that allowed the Warriors to take a 16-points lead into the final minute.
 
Eastern was able to secure the win despite three starters fouling out: junior forward Drew Soltis (Bridgeport) with six minutes left and Eastern leading by 16; senior forward Jalen Hamblin (West Hartford) with 2:49 remaining and Eastern up by 14, and senior guard Dominick Dao (Terryville) with 19.1 seconds left and the Warriors in control of a 14-point lead.
 
Up by eight midway through the first half, the Warriors doubled their lead to 16 with a run of eight straight points, the final six coming courtesy of Carter, who banged a three-pointer off of one of senior guard Michael Carothers' (Queens, NY) 14 assists,  and a followed with a conventional three-point play to make it 34-18 with 6:32 left in the half.
 
Needing seven points to reach 1,000 points in his four-year career, Dao reached and exceeded that mark by draining his first three three-point field goal attempts in a span of 4:16 in the first half. The first was the result of his own steal and a pass from Carothers that gave Eastern a 10-5 lead with 15:29, the second coming off a steal by Soltis that made it 17-7 with 12:47 remaining -- both of those three-pointers coming in front of the Conn bench -- and the third – a catch-and-shoot  jumper over two defenders from the top of the key off a screen by Sanchez set up by a defensive rebound and pass from Jones -- pushing the lead to 13, 22-9 with 11:13 remaining.

Dao finished  the night with 18 points on 6-of-10 shooting from the floor (4-of-5 from distance) and two free throws, giving him 1,011 points in his career which ranks him 37th all-time among Eastern players who have recorded as many as 1,000 points in their collegiate careers. 
 
Sanchez was 9-of-12 from the floor and grabbed six rebounds en route to matching Dao's point total. Hamblin was 5-of-7 and added six points from the foul line and seven rebounds. Soltis was also 5-of-7 in scoring ten points. In addition to his career-high assist total, Carothers grabbed a season-high eight rebounds.
 
Jones made a significant contribution in the second half despite playing only (the final) five minutes. After Sanchez found Carothers on a backdoor cut (Carothers' only basket of the game) that made it 84-69 with 5:20 left, Hamblin fed Jones on a cut to the basket that made it 86-72 with 3:40 left, and Jones followed by connecting on both ends of a 1-and-1 following Sanchez' only offensive rebound of the game that pushed the lead to 15, 90-75, with 2:13 left. Jones converted his only field goal attempt and only two free throw tries and added two assists and no turnovers in the second half.
 
Conn finished with four double-digit scorers, led by season scoring leader James LaFrance, a 6-foot-2 inch guard. LaFrance totalled 17 points, but only nine of them came from the floor (he was 8-of-9 from the stripe). No Conn player managed more than one three-point field goal.  Junior guard Greg Cantwell and senior forward Elias Espinosa followed LaFrance with 14 points each. Junior forward Dylan Watson had 12 points and a team-high eight rebounds, with Cantwell pulling down seven.
 
The win was Eastern's 15th in its last 16 non-conference games, the only setback in that stretch coming last Tuesday at Trinity.
 
Eastern opens its Little East Conference season Wednesday, Dec. 3 at Western Connecticut State University at 7 p.m. before playing back-to-back days Dec. 6-7 at the Norwich University Hock Classic and Dec. 29-30 by hosting its own holiday invitational at Geissler Gymnasium that completes the 2025 portion of the schedule.