By Tony Miller
Sports Information Director

GOSHEN, Ind. — Conner Funkhouser scored a game-high 19 points off the bench as Goshen College opened the Crossroads League men's basketball season with a 90-84 win over Huntington University on Tuesday night in Gunden Gymnasium.

The Maple Leafs (5-3, 1-0) shot 46 percent from the floor while out-rebounding Huntington (4-5, 0-1) by a 47-37 margin. Patryck Ostrowski added a game-high four blocks and the team finished 20-for-24 (83.3 percent) at the foul line to salt the game away.

Huntington pushed out to an early lead, peaking at 27-20 with 6:43 before halftime, as sloppy defense led to Goshen committing 10 of the game's first 12 fouls. A 10-2 run capped by two straight baskets from Christian Grider gave Goshen the lead back at the 3:57 mark and the hosts would lead for 22 of the last 23 minutes.

After trailing 50-46 at the intermission, HU got a 7-0 run to pull ahead by two points on a Konner Platt basket five minutes later. Goshen immediately countered with a 12-0 spurt, holding the Foresters without a made basket for almost seven minutes and stretching the lead out to 69-58.

Unfortunately for the home side, Huntington had another run left in the tank, using points on three straight trips to close within 77-74 at the 4:21 mark. Fortunately for GC, even after the teams traded misses and then makes, the Foresters never got closer than the two-points margin they achieved on a Tyler Arens 3-point play with 2:41 left.

After another pair of traded baskets, Devin Heath-Granger went on a personal 5-0 run, draining a triple with 54.0 seconds left and knocking down two foul shots at :37.7 following an Arens miss to put his team up 86-79. Four Billy Geschke foul shots rounded out the Goshen scoring: after GC's early foul trouble, Huntington committed 19 of the last 27 infractions by players in addition to a coach technical.

 Grider finished with 18 points, Geschke 13 and Ostrowski 11 for the purple, gray and white; Alhassan Barrie led the team with nine rebounds while Grider and Ostrowski added six each. Heath-Granger's eight assists accounted for nearly half of Goshen's team total.

"I couldn't be more proud of our guys," said Goshen interim head coach Jon Tropf. "We played incredibly hard and sustained multiple runs. Our bigs, Pat and Emmanuel Audu, made some crucial plays, AB was unreal on defense and our seniors made huge shots late. I'm excited to share this win with them, but they made all the plays and deserve all the credit."

Huntington's leading scorer also came off the bench in the person of Mason Coverstone, who scored 18 to beat out 15 apiece by Bush and Merder. Bush led all players with 11 assists while Arens had 13 rebounds, but no other Forester had more than six rebounds or four dimes. Bush also set the game high with four steals. While each team hit eight triples, no player had more than two.

The win stretches Goshen's head-to-head winning streak to four games in the Crossroads League's longest continuously-running men's basketball series, which dates to Goshen's admission to the league (then the Mid-Central College Conference) in 1970-71. The Maple Leafs' last winning streak of that length against Huntington was part of a five-game spurt from 1974-76.

The Maple Leafs have a week off over Thanksgiving weekend before returning to the floor next week for a pair of road trips to NAIA top-10 teams, beginning with a visit to sixth-ranked Indiana Wesleyan at 7 p.m. next Tuesday.