Dottin, Bell Team to Lead USD Past Marist, 62-56

Gylan Dottin scored a career-high 23 points, including the last 9 of the game, to lead the University of San Diego men’s basketball team to a 62-56 victory over Marist College Friday in the USD Sports Center.

The victory stopped a 3-game losing for USD (5-5). Marist, from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and the Northeast Conference, is 3-5.

Wednesday against Loyola Marymount, Marist scored 54 points in the first half in a 131-107 loss. Coach Hank Egan said the USD defense played its best game of the season so far.

Dondi Bell guarded Marist’s 6-foot 11-inch center Miroslav Pecarski, who was averaging 22 points a game, held Pecarski to 10 points in the first half and 6 in the second.

“Dondi did a great job on him,” Egan said.

Neither team held a lead bigger than 6 points until USD took a 56-47 lead with 5:20 left. USD accumulated that lead with a 16-7 streak, with Dottin hitting 2 3-pointers and Bell (8 points, 6 rebounds) making a slam dunk and a tip-in of a missed Wayman Strickland shot.

Marist came back strong with a 7-2 run and pulled to within, 58-54, with 43 seconds left.

Until that point Marist had been deadly from the free-throw line but Marist missed five free throws in the last 5 minutes (they were 12 of 18 for the game).

“We had a couple of team meetings this week and decided we can be a very good team when we come ready to play,” Dottin said.