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NEWARK, N.J. – It was a tale of two halves for the Kennesaw State men's basketball team as NJIT pulled away late to erase the Owls first half lead and down KSU 72-52 in Saturday afternoon's ASUN opener.
 
Bryson Lockley recorded his third double-double of the year with 11 points and 14 rebounds while Tyler Hooker and NJIT's Zach Cooks, the conference's two leading scorers, both finished the game with 19 points to lead all scorers.
 
How it happened: The Owls (3-13, 0-1) came out firing to open the game on a 7-0 run. NJIT (13-3, 1-0) eventually settled down, responding with an 11-0 run of its own to take a 13-9 lead at the 12:04 mark. Bobby Parker finally broke the Highlanders run with a jumper followed by a three-pointer to regain the lead for KSU, 14-13. 
 
The two squads proceeded to trade buckets until Hooker came alive with five minutes remaining in the first half. The Simpsonville, S.C., native scored the next 12 straight points for the Owls to close out the period on a 12-2 run and take a 30-23 lead over the Highlanders at the half.
 
The Owls held NJIT's Cooks to only two points in the opening half.
 
The Highlanders got back in it during the opening minutes of the second half, going on a 10-0 run to take the lead, 35-33, at the 16:36 mark. NJIT extended its lead behind a 13-2 run to make it 48-37.
 
The Highlanders pushed their lead to as high as 21 points as KSU went over four minutes without a field goal. NJIT outscored the Owls 49-22 in the second half, shooting 63 percent from the floor, compared to 24 percent for the Owls, and 7-of-14 from three-point range.
 
Notes: Tyler Hooker has scored 15 or more points in seven of the last eight games, 10 or more in 14 straight … Bryson Lockley tied his career-high with 14 rebounds … Isaac Mbuyamba recorded a career-high 10 rebounds as KSU out-rebounded NJIT 44-37 … it's the fifth time this season KSU has recorded 40 or more rebounds.
 
Quotes: Head Coach Al Skinner
On the difference between the first and second half…
"Obviously the first 20 minutes we did some good things, the second 20 minutes they came out more aggressive and we just didn't respond to that. Unfortunately, young teams do that. We didn't stay focused on what we needed to do, particularly our execution on the offensive end. When teams start to assert themselves, we have to respond and assert ourselves, and we did not do that. Hopefully we learn from this and build on it. Again we showed, if given time, running our offense we get good looks, good scores. We defended well, but again in the second half they came out more aggressive and we did not stay the course. We weren't tough enough mentally to continue to execute what we needed to have both offensively and defensively."

On what this means as conference play continues…
"We are going to get better, our guys are going to get better. The nice thing is that we have had good practices, guys have worked hard there, and it showed up tonight. Now you start to get into the aspect of how to win basketball games and we haven't learned that yet. We did not respond to the fact that they started to assert themselves, and moving forward I'd like to think we will learn from this and next time we'll be able to respond better."
 
Up next: The Owls head back to Kennesaw to open a three-game homestand against Jacksonville Wednesday night at 7 p.m.