WATERVILLE — As if watching a 12-point lead vanish in the first 10 minutes of the second half couldn’t be frustrating enough, the Colby Mules had to deal with the constant daggers from Bowdoin’s backcourt anytime it tried to get up off the mat.

Bowdoin guards Lucas Hausman and Bryan Hurley combined for 47 points to help Bowdoin rally and then hold off Colby for a 68-65 win Saturday at Wadsworth Gymnasium.

With the win, the Polar Bears (13-4 overall, 4-1 New England Small College Athletic Conference) split the season series with their rivals. Colby (11-7, 3-2) won the first meeting in Brunswick, 61-48 on Dec. 6.

Hausman led all scorers with 24 points and also had six rebounds and four assists. Hurley was the only other Bowdoin player to reach double figures with 23 points after shooting 4-for-9 from beyond the 3-point arc.

“The biggest difference from the first semester to the second semester was we were a team that would just run through our sets, not really push it as much, not looking to attack. That killed us the first game we played against them,” said Hurley, a senior. “The second half of the season, we’ve been trying to get out in transition more because Lucas Hausman is a great finisher and really good at getting to the hoop.”

“In the second half, Hausman and Hurley both made very timely shots, and that put us into playing against their halfcourt defense time and time again,” Colby coach Damien Strahorn said. “We just didn’t have quite enough trips in transition where we could attack more easily.”

Chris Hudnut led Colby with 19 points, 13 rebounds and five assists. Sam Wilson added 14 points.

Wilson opened the second half with a 3-pointer to give the Mules a 39-27 lead. But Bowdoin switched from playing mostly a matchup zone in the first half to defending more man-to-man in the second half and limited Colby to 30 percent shooting from the field.

“We mixed it up a little bit. We tried to keep them a little more confused in the second half,” Bowdoin coach Tim Gilbride said. “We showed some zone, played man. I thought our effort was great in the second half. We just kept digging down.”

The Polar Bears went on a 19-6 run to gain their first lead of the game when Hausman and Liam Farley hit back-to-back 3-pointers to make it 48-47 midway through the second half.

The lead change came in the early stages of a five-minute stretch in which Colby did not score a field goal, missing five straight attempts while Bowdoin slowly extended its lead to 56-50 with 5:28 remaining.

“I didn’t necessarily mind the shot selection,” Strahorn said. “What I would say we needed to be better at was moving through our actions with more pace and force them to cover multiple actions. It wasn’t necessarily the rhythm shots that we typically want.”

Hudnut finally ended the drought with a layup to make it a four-point game with 5:52 left. But the Mules wouldn’t get any closer until it was too late, going another four-plus minutes without a field goal.

The Mules still threatened to make it a one-possession game a couple of times, but Hurley responded with either a 3-pointer or by hitting a pair of free throws to keep them at arm’s length.

“In the second half, it was just energy in general,” Hurley said. “At halftime, coach railed into us, telling us if we were going to win this game, it’s about effort. We weren’t playing that bad offensively. We just didn’t have energy. You could tell. They were beating us to about every 50/50 ball.”

Colby closed the first half with plenty of energy and style, going on a 15-6 run to break a 21-21 tie. Hudnut followed a 3-point play with a putback to get it started. Luke Westman (11 points, six rebounds, five assists) closed it out with a dunk off a Shane Rogers steal that sent the Mules into the locker room with a 36-27 lead.

“It ties back into the defense’s ability to get stops,” Strahorn said. “I thought we were able to get out in transition and played more in space and found a much better rhythm in the first half.”

Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638

rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @RAWmaterial33

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