After staging a second-half comeback against Hartford on Monday, the Binghamton men’s basketball team hit the road on Wednesday to complete its two-game series against the Hawks. This time, BU was unable to carry over its energy from its previous matchup and struggled to compete against Hartford away from home, losing the game 72-60.

“I thought it was identical to what happened to us [on Monday],” said Binghamton head coach Levell Sanders. “Defense couldn’t guard anybody, guys were just driving by us … I don’t know if it was fatigue, but we felt we were capable of guarding them the second half of [Monday’s] game. Tonight … they jumped all over us.”

Binghamton (8-9, 5-3 America East [AE]) played a slow first half. Beyond the first few minutes of the match, Hartford (4-12, 2-2 AE) quickly built a lead and capitalized on poor shooting from BU. Early on the Bearcats tied the game at five, but the Hawks jumped forward with a 15-2 run. Compared to Hartford’s 45.2 percent shooting from the field, Binghamton only shot 29.6 percent in the first half.

“Offensively, we took too many jumpers,” Sanders said. “Some of them were laying off of us, daring our guys to shoot. I thought we took too many jumpers instead of trying to penetrate into the basket.”

The Bearcats were down 38-23 and still had not found their footing at the start of the second half. Feeding off the energy in the Chase Arena, the Hartford offense continued to threaten Binghamton and further extended its lead to a game-high 20 points. BU only began to chew away at the deficit in the last five minutes of play, posting a 13-8 run to close out the match. Despite outscoring the Hawks 37-34 in the last 20 minutes of the game, the Bearcats failed to replicate Monday’s second half performance and suffered their biggest conference defeat of the season.

“We got to be better starting games because we put ourselves in deficits like this and it’s hard to come back,” Sanders said. ”You almost have to play a perfect game, so we definitely can’t make this a trend.”

While BU’s performance Monday night was spearheaded by the team’s energy on its home court, the Bearcats showed no sign of life throughout the majority of Wednesday’s matchup. Although junior forwards Bryce Beamer and George Tinsley injected some life into the Binghamton lineup, the away side was never able to capitalize off of their contributions.

“I told [Beamer] after the first game against Hartford that his energy was good off the bench and that he was into the game, ‘Your time is going to come,’” Sanders said. “We had to have other guys step up and [Tinsley] has played two games really well for us, gave us a lift, and [Beamer] today was good.”

Both Beamer and Tinsley came off the bench and combined for almost half of Binghamton’s total points tallying 14 and 15, respectively. Beamer was 4-4 from beyond the arc and scored more points than he played minutes. Tinsley contributed eight rebounds in his 25 minutes on the court while shooting 83.3 percent from the field.

“Today, [Beamer] stepped up and that’s good because we’re going to need him throughout the season,” Sanders said. “We still have 10 games left, so we’re going to need him … He definitely brings energy which you always want, and he’ll have more opportunities to get out there and play.”

In spite of the defeat to Hartford, Binghamton currently remains third overall in the AE standings behind Stony Brook and Vermont. This game concludes a three-game stretch over a five-day period, where the Bearcats went 2-1.

Next up for the Bearcats is a home matchup against UMBC on Saturday, Jan. 29. Tipoff is set for 2 p.m. at the Dr. Bai Lee Court at the Events Center in Vestal, New York.