Defiance Dismantles Manchester, 86-72, in Home Opener

DEFIANCE, Ohio – The Defiance College men's basketball team played on its home court for the first time this season and clicked on all cylinders from the opening tip. The Jackets led by as many as 25 midway through the second half, before settling for an 86-72 win over Manchester on Saturday.

Mike Floyd picked apart the Spartan defense all game long and ended with a new career-best 15 assists to top his previous record of 13 set one week earlier at Hanover. Floyd's pin-point passes led to numerous open looks for the rest of the DC squad and resulted in 50.8-percent shooting from the floor for the Yellow Jackets.

Anthony Pettaway dominated play in the paint, registering his fourth double-double of the year with 22 points on nine-of-13 shooting and pulling down 11 rebounds. Nick Sales complimented Pettaway's effort with nine points and eight boards of his own, helping Defiance outscore the Spartans by a 36-20 clip in the paint and control the boards to the tune of a 42-26 advantage.

After Manchester switched to a zone defense to slow DC's inside game, the hot shooting of Heath Armstrong, Anthony Brown and Kyle Tietje buried the Spartans by combining for 10 makes from beyond the arc in 22 attempts. Armstrong led the way with six-of-eight from long distance and ended with 19 points, while Tietje had 12 points and Brown tacked on 10.

Despite the balanced scoring attack, Manchester managed to stay close due to some clutch shots of its own and pulled to within 49-42 on a trey from Tyler Henn at the 16:24 mark of the second period.

Defiance took control of the game at that point however, using a steady string of defensive stops and a parade of long-range bombs to unleash a 24-6 rally over the next 4:45 of action. The Jackets banged in five trifectas during that spurt and took a 73-48 lead with 11:39 to play on Armstrong's third triple of that stretch.

The 25-point cushion was steadily chipped away by the scrappy Manchester team, and closed to just 10 points on another bucket from Henn with 3:36 to play.

Defiance countered coming out of a timeout as Floyd found Armstrong, who dialed it up from long distance once again. Armstrong's sixth make from beyond the arc pushed the spread back to 83-70 and proved to be the final dagger, as DC coasted to the 86-72 victory.

Defiance moves to 2-0 in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference and 4-3 overall with its third-straight win. DC will look to make it four in a row on Tuesday, when it hosts Kalamazoo at 7:00 pm.