Dogs battle back for fourth straight victory

ELON, N.C. -- Citadel coach Ed Conroy was not pleased with the start or the finish of Saturday's basketball game at Elon.

But he will gladly take gladly everything that happened in between -- and the result.

The Bulldogs spotted Elon an 11-point lead at the start, and hit just 6 of 12 free throws in the final 94 seconds. But in between, they did enough for a 77-72 victory at Alumni Gym, extending their win streak to four games.

Cameron Wells posted his third double-double with 20 points and 12 rebounds, and Harrison DuPont and Austin Dahn combined for 34 points as the Bulldogs improved to 14-12 overall and 8-6 in the Southern Conference.

The Citadel matched a school record for victories in consecutive seasons (34), and is 10-1 in the month of February the last two seasons. The Bulldogs remained a half-game behind third-place Davidson (13-12, 8-5) in the SoCon South Division after the Wildcats won at Western Carolina, 75-72, on Saturday night.

All of that seemed unlikely after Elon (6-19, 4-10) sprinted to leads of 8-0 and 14-3, forcing a Conroy time out just 91 seconds into the game.

"They know I was not happy with our start, and I'm still not happy about it," Conroy said. "I knew that this Elon team has played really well lately, and at home they have a lot of confidence. I told our guys they'd be aggressive at the start and come at us, and our discipline really broke down in the first five minutes."

The Bulldogs quickly regained their poise, thanks largely to the efforts of Wells, DuPont and Dahn. DuPont, a freshman, had a career-best 18 points and eight rebounds, while Dahn made five 3-pointers, all in the second half, to finish with 17 points.

Over the last four games, Dahn is 13 of 26 from 3-point range and averaging 12.5 points.

"Austin made us extremely hard to guard in the second half," said Conroy, whose team was 15 of 21 from the field and 6 of 9 from 3-point range after intermission. "He was in the right spots and knocking down shots, and we were awfully hard to guard in the second half."

Adam Constantine, a 6-8 senior, led Elon with 24 points and 15 rebounds, while Drew Spradlin added 18 points.

The Bulldogs did not take their first lead until just 8:03 remained in the game, when DuPont cut backdoor and took a nifty pass from Zach Urbanus for a 54-52 edge. That was part of a 24-5 run that took The Citadel from six behind to a 66-53 lead on an Urbanus trey at 4:16.

The Citadel missed 6 of 12 free throws in the final 1:34, and Elon got to within 74-68 with 1:12 left. A free throw by Urbanus and two from Wells were enough to hold the Phoenix at bay.

Down by 31-28 at the break, The Citadel quickly tied it in the second half at 36-36 as Dahn made two quick treys.

But Chris Long and Spradlin hit consecutive treys to push the Phoenix back up by six. Wells converted a 3-point play to kick off the Bulldogs' decisive 24-5 run.

After the slow start, the Bulldogs came from 11 down to trail by just 31-28 at the half.

This report was compiled by The Post and Courier's Jeff Hartsell.