Closing out last weekend with its first win in AE play — a 51-50 victory against Maine— the Binghamton men’s basketball team brought its winning ways back to Vestal and made it two straight victories, defeating NJIT 75-66 Wednesday night. After a back-and-forth first half, the Bearcats took over the second half to secure their first home win in America East (AE) conference play.

“After losing the UMass Lowell game, [junior guard Tymu Chenery] said that he thought we needed to practice harder,” said Binghamton head coach Levell Sanders. “Sometimes as coaches, you overthink it. You try to save guys because we play Thursday and play Saturday … Usually Mondays are hard days but now we go Monday, Tuesday [and] Wednesday exactly the same. I think it allows us to be able to keep up and play that kind of pace that we’ve been playing at and play with the intensity that we need to play at.”

A 10-0 run by the Bearcats (10-10, 2-5 AE) kicked things off, as senior forward Nehemiah Benson dominated the Highlanders (5-15, 1-7 AE) in the paint. Benson, who shot 5-for-5 from the field on the half, found success in the paint by hooking in layups over NJIT’s defense. The forward capped off the run by turning around and nailing a jumper, before getting the rock down low to Harried who dunked it in to make it 12-5 BU.

“We have to play that way,” Sanders said. “We’re not a team that shoots the three ball … The more points that we can get in the paint, the easier it is for us. I thought the paint battle was going to be key.”

After senior forward Tariq Balogun floated in a layup and built a 14-7 Binghamton lead, NJIT found its pace offensively and tied things up. The Bearcats kept fighting to keep the lead, with graduate student guard Symir Torrence kicking it out to a wide-open graduate student guard Dan Petcash in the corner for three to make it 18-15. Then, sophomore guard Chris Walker sank in a three-pointer at the top of the key to hand BU a 30-28 lead. The back-and-forth nature continued with BU taking a 38-37 advantage into halftime after Torrence lobbed it to Petcash who floated in a jumper to open the final minute before finding Chenery — in his first game back from injury — at the rim who sunk a basket as time expired to retake the lead.

Binghamton brought the energy to open the second, with Balogun blocking an NJIT shot that ended up in Torrence’s hands. Torrence then connected with Harried for an alley-oop to make it a 42-39 game. Binghamton proceeded to build a five-point advantage at 46-41 following a hook shot from Balogun and a one-handed jumper from Benson, before a floater by Benson in the paint made it 50-44 Binghamton. Harried then got around his Highlander defender and swished a layup, before drawing the and-one on his next shot at the rim to extend BU’s lead to seven.

“It was intensity on defense,” Sanders said. “Our intensity on defense needed to pick up … so we got on the guys a little bit and guys responded. They came out and stepped it up. We changed our ball screen coverage up a little bit, which didn’t allow [NJIT] to just come off and be as comfortable. Little, minor adjustments, but the biggest thing was just the intensity.”

The Bearcats continued to separate themselves from the visitors through the efforts of Chenery, who went coast to coast for an easy transition layup before creating a three-point play on a driving layup during his next touch to make it a 62-53 contest. The scoreboard then read 69-55 BU after Harried’s third dunk of the day, before a coast-to-coast layup by Torrence made it 71-56. Binghamton remained in control the rest of the way, cruising to a 75-66 win at the buzzer.

Leading the way with 16 points off of 63.6 percent shooting from the field was Benson, with Balogun adding 14 points and Chenery putting up 12 points in 12 minutes. Binghamton controlled the battle on the boards — securing 40 compared to NJIT’s 31 — with only seven turnovers.

“They had nine offensive rebounds,” Sanders said. “They lead the conference in offensive rebounds, and they [hadn’t] had a single digit offensive rebounding game in the conference so that was something we wanted to do. I’m happy we did that.”

Binghamton will look to extend its two game win streak against first place Vermont on Saturday, Feb. 3rd. Tip-off is set for 2 p.m. at Patrick Gym in Burlington, Vermont.