GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – Blaise Threatt scored 27 points and Owen Koonce put up a 16-point first half as Colorado Mesa men's basketball made it 17 wins in 18 games with a 76-61 victory over CSU Pueblo at Brownson Arena.  

Koonce and Threatt scored 28 of the team's 34 first-half points and the Mavericks once again maintained a double-digit lead for effectively all of the second half. The Mavs are 22-4 overall and 17-3 in conference play and will enter the final week of the season one game behind Fort Lewis in the race for the RMAC regular season championship.

Koonce started out on fire, making 6 of 8 field goals in a first half where the rest of the Mavericks combined to shoot 7-for-21. The redshirt sophomore was a true three-level scorer, swishing a trio of three-pointers while also pounding the paint for turnaround jumpers and a dunk. Koonce ended up with a season-high 19 points, just one off his career-high of 20.

Mac Riniker contributed six rebounds and a team-high four assists. Reece Johnson tallied five points and five rebounds, and also had the first multi-block game of his career, swatting away two Pueblo shots to triple up his season total, which now sits at three.

The teams were statistically close in a lot of areas. CMU had a slight rebounding edge of 37-36 and a  points in the paint edge of 30-26 while both teams had 12 turnovers. In the end, ball movement helped the Mavericks, as CMU dished out 15 assists to CSU Pueblo's eight, which enabled quality looks and a team shooting percentage of 47 percent for the Mavs.

Colorado Mesa essentially iced the game just after halftime. After carrying a seven-point lead into the locker room, the Mavs opened the second half on a 10-0 run that included a pair of three-pointers from Threatt. The redshirt sophomore guard scored 15 of his 27 points in the second half.

ThunderWolves guard Lian Romero tried to play his team back into the game, scoring 15 points with three triples in the second half, but Michael McCurry hit a layup with 8:44 left to punctuate a 10-2 Maverick scoring run that bumped the lead back up to 17.

The final week of the regular season features a Wednesday matchup against Westminster at Brownson Arena before CMU travels to local rivals Western Colorado the following day. Wednesday's game will tip off at 7:30 p.m.