After a hot start to its Patriot League regular season schedule, the men’s basketball team has had its success come to a recent halt after dropping games to Lehigh and Colgate.

The first of these losses came on Feb. 10 at Sojka Pavilion, as the Lehigh Mountain Hawks constructed a 26 point advantage after the first 14 minutes of play. Losing by a final score of just 80-65, it is apparent that Coach Nathan Davis’ team got its act together after falling behind, but dug itself into too deep of a hole early on. Lehigh proved to be a potent offensive team. The Bison made several runs in the second half and cut their deficit to a manageable margin, trailing by only nine with 11 minutes to play, but were always  countered by the seemingly unstoppable Lehigh offense.

Leading the way for the Bison in this one were Zach Thomas ’18, who had 17 points, Nana Foulland ’18, who tallied 13 points and 10 boards, Stephen Brown ’18 with 12 points, and Chris Hass ’16 with 10. The Bison bench also outscored Lehigh 27-0 on the night, mostly due to another big game from Thomas.

Just a few days later, the Orange and Blue lost their second contest in a row, dropping a game to Colgate by a score of 91-81. The loss marked the first time since December the Orange and Blue have lost consecutive games and also gave Colgate their second win against the Bison this season. The Bison found themselves on the receiving end of yet another game of high opponent shooting as the Raiders shot 60 percent on the game.

The Bison offense did not have a bad night by any stretch, going 49 percent from the field and 10-21 from the three. A still-limited Hass found himself back in his familiar role as the team’s top scorer in this one, as he had 17 points to his name. Thomas recorded 15 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season and Nate Jones ’19 had the first double-digit scoring outing of his collegiate career with 10 points.

The Orange and Blue pulled within four points in the second half, but an unfortunate stretch of free throws coupled with some good Raider offense brought the Bison deficit to 10 with three and a half minutes to go. From there, the Bison were forced to foul and Colgate made good on their final eight free throw attempts to seal the win.

The Orange and Blue, now sitting at 13-12 (10-4 PL) hold just a one game lead over Navy in the Patriot League standings. The Bison will be at home on Feb. 21 as they host the Terriers of Boston University at 12 p.m. The game will be televised on CBS Sports Network.