The St. Thomas Aquinas College men's basketball team closed out the weekend with an 82-59 setback against St. Anselm's College in the final contest of this weekend's Spartan Conference Challenge at Aquinas Hall. The Spartans fell to 1-1 with the loss, while St. Anselm's completed the weekend sweep to improve to 2-0.

For the second straight game, STAC struggled in the early going, with a Tim Guers three-pointer staking the visitors to a 16-6 lead. The Spartans rallied back to trim the margin to 18-15 on Justin Reyes' thunderous dunk, but Harrison Taggart would score five straight points to key an 18-4 outburst for the Hawks, who cruised into halftime with a 38-23 lead.

STAC started the second half strong on a pair of Jules deCourtenay buckets and Justin Reyes would hit a trey to bring the gap to 40-30, but that was as close as they would get as St. A's again had the answer, posting an 11-0 run and holding serve from there.

Reyes led three Spartans in double-figures with 14 points, with Chaz Watler adding 11. Mike McCahey turned in a superlative performance for St. Anselm's with a game-high 32 points, incuding six three-pointers. Guers (15 points) and Victor Joshua (11) added to the scoring impact for the Hawks.

The Spartans return to action on Wednesday night, November 18, when Felician University visits Aquinas Hall for a non-conferece tilt, with tipoff time slated for 7:00 pm.

- Steve Balsan, St. Thomas Aquinas Sports Information