Box Score

The Colorado Mesa University Men's Basketball team was on the road on Tuesday night for a Quarterfinal matchup with the CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves. The Mavericks are on a similar path they took last season when they landed in the RMAC Tournament Championship game. Last season, they defeated #1 seed Metro State in Denver and tonight they defeated the CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves 74-65 in Pueblo. The win pushed the Mavericks record to 17-9 on the season while CSU-Pueblo drops to 15-13.

Colorado Mesa started the game on a 13-3 run whcih took them to the 15:10 mark of the first half. They led by as many as 12 in the half but CSU-Pueblo managed to tie the game at 26-26 with just 1:51 to go. A pair of Daniel Estes free-throws with a second to go gave the Mavericks a two point lead at halftime 28-26.

Jeff Hart led all scorers at haltime with 10 points.

Things were different in the second half. Colorado Mesa outscored the ThunderWolves 46-39 in the half and built as big as a 20 point lead midway through the period and never looked back.

CMU shot 54.8 percent for the game while holding CSU-Pueblo to just 30.9 percent from the field. The ThunderWolves shot 37 three pointers and made just 27 percent of those while the Mavericks were 50 percent (4-of-8) from beyond the arc.

A glaring advantage the Mavericks had was at the charity stripe. Colorado Mesa shot 38 free-throws while making just 63 percent of them (24-of-38), CSU-Pueblo shot just 14 but only missed one.

Colton Burgon led the Mavericks with 21 points and eight rebounds. Jeff Hart chipped in 20 and was 3-for-3 from downtown.

Mike Mellilo netted eight points but grabbed 12 rebounds on the night.

CSU-Pueblo's Jed Knafelc led all scorers with 27 points and was 5-of-10 from three point land.

The Mavericks will be headed to Denver for a showdown with RMAC regular season champion, the Metro State Roadrunners on Friday at 7:00pm from the Auraria Events Center.