Box Score WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – Junior Jack Bramswig (Pleasantville, N.Y./Pleasantville) and sophomore Mike Murray (Queens, N.Y./St. Francis Prep) combined for 46 points, but the remainder of the Manhattanville men's basketball team managed to score just 23 points as the Valiants fell to King's (Pa.), 80-69, in a Freedom Conference contest on Saturday afternoon at Scandlon Gymnasium.
                                     
Murray had a great game offensively for Manhattanville (8-9, 2-4 Freedom), easily surpassing his career high with a team-leading 26 points on 7-of-12 shooting and a 9-of-13 effort from the charity stripe.  Bramswig had another solid outing in the front court as well, scoring 20 points on 9-of-16 shooting and hauling in a career-best-tying 17 rebounds for his conference-leading 10th double-double of the year.
 
King's (8-9, 3-3 Freedom) had more balance in its scoring attack, even though Kyle Hammonds led all scorers with 28 points in only 27 minutes. Matt Fiorino added 18 points, Tim O'Shea had 13 and 10 rebounds, and Connor Hughes netted 12 points as well for the Monarchs.
 
The Monarchs started hot out of the gates, hitting their first five shots – including four from long range – to jump out to an early 14-4 lead less than 3:30 in. Manhattanville never got the deficit below 10 points for the remainder of the half – and when it did get to 10, King's responded with a 12-2 run that made it a 42-22 score with 3:14 left in the half.
 
King's went into halftime with an 18-point lead at 48-30 despite the best efforts of Murray, who had 16 of his team's 30 points at the intermission.
 
Hammonds started the second half with another three-pointer to give his team a game-high 21-point lead at 51-30 1:33 into the stanza. But the visitors did not go away easily, slowly chipping away at the King's lead and getting it down to 11 with 13:29 left on a three from freshman Anthony Maestre (Bronx, N.Y./Mount St. Michael Academy).
 
After an O'Shea jumper, back-to-back buckets from Bramswig and Murray lowered the deficit to nine points (61-52) with 10:45 remaining. The Monarch lead was still 12 with six minutes to go before a quick 6-0 run made it a 70-64 game with 3:57 on the clock, as the Valiants got a layup from Bramswig and two free throws each from Murray and Maestre.
 
Manhattanville was still within reach down by six points entering the final minute of play, but Fiorino hit all four of his free throws and O'Shea added one to keep the Valiants out of reach.
 
King's finished the game shooting 46.6 percent (27 for 58) from the field and did a lot of their damage from beyond the arc, shooting an excellent 11 for 18 (61.1 percent) from long range. Manhattanville shot 40.0 percent (22 for 55) from the field on the afternoon.
 
The Valiants will return home for two games at Kennedy Gym next week, beginning with a Wednesday night meeting with DeSales at 8 p.m. The game will be video streamed live on GoValiants.TV beginning at approximately 7:55 p.m.