BALTIMORE – Loyola University Maryland men's basketball used a 16-0 run to take an early 10-point lead just over eight minutes into the game, and the Greyhounds never relented en route to an 88-69 victory on Sunday night in Reitz Arena.
 
The Leopards (7-5 overall) hit two 3-pointers in the game's first three minutes to lead 6-0, but Loyola scored the next 16 and went up 16-6 on an Isaiah Hart layup at 11:58, forcing a Lafayette timeout.
 
Nearly two minutes later, Kyle Jenkins hit a three for Lafayette to get the deficit to seven, but Loyola came back with an Alonso Faure layup and then a steal by Luke Johnson led to a Jaylin Andrews transition basket to put the lead back in double-digits where it would for all but one possession the rest of the game.
 
Two free throws by Lafayette pulled the Leopards within nine, 22-13, with 7:15 to go in the opening half, but a Hart made threes on back-to-back possessions, stretching the lead to 16 in less than a minute.
 
Hart finished with a season-high 18 points, and he had five assists without a turnover in 33 minutes of action.
 
Jaylin Andrews matched Hart's 18 points, and Santi Aldama scored 19 to go with nine rebounds and four assists.
 
Alonso Faure contributed 11 points and six rebounds in just 17 minutes, while Luke Johnson and Wade Jackson chipped in with eight and six points, respectively.
 
A Johnson jumper at the first-half buzzer gave Loyola a 44-26 lead at the break, and the Greyhounds would extend that to 20 points within a minute at the start of the second half.
 
From there, Lafayette twice got within 15 points, but it would draw no closer as the Gryehounds shot 53 percent overall in the game and held the Leopards to 43.1 percent.
 
The Greyhounds had 22 assists, a total that is tied for 11^th-most in school history. Golden Dike passed out a career-high six assists, while Hart had five and Aldama four. Loyola also had just seven turnovers in the game, its lowest total of the season and fewest since December 2019.
 
Loyola returns to the court next weekend for a pair of games against Lehigh University. The Mountain Hawks host the first game on Saturday at 2 p.m., followed by a 6 p.m. contest on Sunday, February 21, in Reitz Arena.