DALTON, Ga. -- UPIKE men's basketball's struggles in the Peach State continued on Saturday with an 88-81 loss to Faulkner.

The Eagles got out to a 13-0 lead which spelled a bit of doom early for the Bears. However, Jayvian Delacruz took matters into his own hands for the most part with eight points in a 10-2 run to cut that lead early.

Delacruz scored a game-high 29 points with six rebounds to pace the Bears. Three other players – Jazz Parker (15), Luke Layhew (13), and Chase Parsley (12) – scored in double figures.

But Faulkner kept hitting bucket after bucket to keep building its lead back up. The Eagles nearly had three players score 20 points, led by Rene Scott's team-high 25 points with Milan Skundric and C.J. Jones' 19 points each.

Overall, Faulkner shot 48.5 percent in the first half to UPIKE's 36 percent to take a 12-point into halftime.

The Bears would try its best to crawl back with seven quick points from Parsley and Delacruz, but the Eagles offense kept firing on all cylinders.

Much like the night prior, UPIKE got into foul trouble and Faulkner took advantage at the free-throw stripe by taking 32 free throws in the game. Despite only having four more turnovers, Faulkner took far greater advantage of the extra opportunities by outscoring the Bears 24-8 off turnovers.

UPIKE eventually cut the Eagle lead down to two with about six minutes to go, but every time the Bears got close, Faulkner had an answer. Pikeville had it down to a one-point game with just under four minutes to go, but couldn't find the go-ahead bucket.

UP NEXT

UPIKE will have over a week to recover from the weekend before facing Ohio-Chillicothe for a second time on Nov. 18 at 3:00 p.m. at the East Kentucky Expo Center.

-UPIKE-