After a narrow 71-69 home win over Maine, the Binghamton men’s basketball team cooled off on Saturday afternoon, sustaining a 79-53 road loss at the hands of UMass Lowell. After a back-and-forth opening stretch of the game, the River Hawks got to work, outpacing BU on both ends of the court to hand the visitors their worst loss of AE play.

“I just thought that Lowell was just the aggressors from the beginning,” said Binghamton head coach Levell Sanders. “I thought we were back on our heels. We were off-balance because of the aggressiveness, especially defensively, which I think affected us on our defensive end, because offensively, we really couldn’t get into the offense, we couldn’t really run in the offense, and then I thought that affected us defensively.”

After winning the tipoff, redshirt junior guard Chris Walker opened up the scoring for Binghamton (15-15, 7-8 AE) by finding senior forward Nehemiah Benson cutting inside for two, but UMass Lowell (17-13, 6-9 AE) responded with a drive of its own to tie up the game. Lowell soon went up 11-6, but graduate student guard Tymu Chenery responded with a wide-open three-pointer to get back within two.

However, the Bearcats wouldn’t get any closer as the River Hawks opened up an 11-point run that gave them a 26-11 advantage. While Chenery broke up the run with a logo three, a pair of threes from the hosts in response made the score 32-14. Binghamton struggled to stop a UMass Lowell squad that shot at a 68 percent clip on the half, with BU’s own offense disrupted by the host’s man defense. Down 40-18, a three from graduate student forward Ben Callahan-Gold led an eight-point run to close out the half, but the Bearcats were still down 40-26 at the break.

“We might have traded some baskets back and forth or whatever, but I never really felt like we were playing our game the way we needed to play,” Sanders said. “Like I said, I just thought there were some moments where they were pressuring us and we couldn’t get the ball where we needed to get the ball.”

Coming out of the break, the River Hawks wasted no time on offense with a 12-point run in the first five minutes, opening the period up 52-26. As the hosts poured in the points, they continued to silence the Bearcat offense, holding it to just two shots while forcing four turnovers on the run. This opening sequence would set the tone for the rest of the half, with a River Hawk three-pointer bringing the score to 61-30. While an eight-point run for BU sparked by a drive from sophomore forward Gavin Walsh made it 63-39, the game remained out of reach. The Bearcats’ final road game of the regular season would see them finish down 26 points, losing 79-53.

“We just had too many turnovers from passes, like trying to pass the ball to the other guy,” Sanders said. “Turnovers turn into easy baskets, and down 14 at half when you come out and you have three or four turnovers, and then they get easy baskets, now they’re [going] from 14 to 25. If we’d come out and gotten stops, 14 could go to seven.”

Saturday’s loss marked the largest margin of defeat for BU in AE play and the first time in this season’s conference BU failed to break 60 points. This marked an uncharacteristic outing for a Binghamton defense — which was ranked first in the conference for three-point percentage allowed at 30.7 percent — as the River Hawks shot 42.9 percent from beyond the arc.

“In the grand scheme of things, for the most part, we’ve been playing well, and it’s no reason to have a big overreaction from one game,” Sanders said. “So it’s a matter of putting it behind us but also learning from the way we need to come on and start games.”

BU will look to right the ship on Tuesday, March 4 as it hosts NJIT for its final game of the regular season. Tipoff is set for 6:07 p.m. on the Dr. Bai Lee Court at the Events Center in Vestal, New York.