CLARION, Pa. - The Slippery Rock University men's basketball team lost to Clarion, 97-87, Saturday on the road in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Western Division competition.
 
Slippery Rock leaves Tippin Gymnasium with a 10-9 overall record and a 6-5 mark inside the PSAC West while the host Golden Eagles snap a five-game losing streak to improve to 9-8 overall and 4-7 in league games.
 
SRU had five athletes finish in double figures Saturday led by the trio of Jomo Goings, Luke Howes and Sheick Samoura.
 
Goings went for a team-high 20 points after shooting 5-for-8 from the field overall, including one 3-pointer, in addition to making all nine of his free throw attempts. Goings, who is now just 20 points away from becoming the 25th Rock athlete in program history to score 1,000 career points, also grabbed four rebounds, blocked three shots and made one steal.
 
Howes poured in 19 points all the while dishing out five assists and coming up with three steals over 37 minutes of playing time. Samoura meanwhile came off the bench to produce an 18-point, five-rebound outing.
 
Day Waters and Ike Herster also hit double figures at 12 and 11 points, respectively, with Herbster corralling a team-best six rebounds.
 
O'Meech Wilson blocked two shots and posted a pair of steals and Bobby Clifford scored five points while pulling in four rebounds to round out SRU's top performers.

The Rock scored the game's opening five points, four of which came from Waters, to grab an early lead. However, Clarion countered by scoring eight consecutive points to take an advantage it would ultimately never relinquish.
 
The Golden Eagles stretched their edge out to as many as 14 points in the opening 20 minutes before Slippery Rock cut its deficit down to nine at 43-34 heading into halftime.
 
While The Rock were able to get to within four points of Clarion on three separate occasions in the second half, they could never quite make a final definitive push as the Golden Eagles thwarted every comeback bid down the stretch to pull away for the 10-point victory.
 
Despite going just 7-of-23 from 3-point range (.304), Slippery Rock still shot a respectable 45.5 percent (30-of-66) overall. SRU was also a near automatic 20-of-23 (.870) at the foul line. After committing 27 turnovers in its loss at No. 21 Gannon University earlier in the week, Slippery Rock settled down to make just 12 miscues against Clarion.
 
Clarion earned the victory by shooting 47.9 percent (34-of-71) overall, 41.7 percent (10-of-24) from 3-point range and 79.2 percent (19-of-24) at the foul line. The Golden Eagles held a slight rebounding advantage (42-38) while scoring 20 points off SRU's 12 turnovers.
 
Cam Kearney, the PSAC's leading scorer, and Trey Nelson paced Clarion by combining for 42 points.
 
Slippery Rock returns home to host Indiana University (Pa.) 7:30 p.m. Jan. 22 at Morrow Field House. Wednesday's game will serve as SRU's annual "White Out Night" and be televised live on WKBN-TV (Youngstown).




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