A pair of double-doubles from Alhassan Barrie and Devin Heath-Granger powered Goshen College to an 83-67 men's basketball win over Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Gunden Gymnasium on Tuesday.

Barrie scored 17 points, missing his career high by two, and grabbed a career-best 17 rebounds while Heath Granger chipped in 10 points and 10 assists for the Maple Leafs (11-16, 4-11). Christian Grider led all players with 22 points; while he missed a double-double by one rebound, his nine caroms set a new season high.

Jevon Knox led Mount Vernon Nazarene (15-12, 7-8) with 19 points while Jeremiah Roberts added nine rebounds.

The Cougars scored 12 of the first 18 points and led by six through the first eight minutes before Goshen used a two-minute 10-0 run to pull ahead 19-15. The Maple Leafs did not relinquish that lead in the remaining 30 minutes.

MVNU got back within one point on a Joe Schmitz 3-pointer 8:27 before halftime; other than that, the visitors' closest approach was 29-24 two minutes before the intermission. Grider scored Goshen's last 10 points going into halftime for a 34-24 lead.

The Cougars went into the locker room shooting 33.3 percent (9-for-27) from the floor compared to Goshen's 40.6 percent (13-for-32). Each team hit its 3-point tries at the same rate: Goshen was 6-for-16 and MVNU 3-for-8. The Maple Leafs' big break came in the steal column, getting eight takeaways to MVNU's two. The 24 points allowed in the first half made it Goshen's stingiest stanza of the season.

Goshen scored the first four points out of the break and opened on a 12-4 run to stretch the lead to 18 points with 15:57 remaining. Mount Vernon countered with four of the next six points, but despite closing within 11 four times, the Maple Leafs' lead remained double digits for every second of the second half. The 67 points GC allowed in the game were their fourth-fewest of the season, second-fewest against an NAIA foe and fewest in conference play. Two Cougar starters, Jacob Paul and Brett Vipperman, didn't score in a combined 46 minutes.

"This was our best defensive performance of the year," said Goshen coach Jon Tropf. "I couldn't be prouder of our guys for our execution. We held a very good player scoreless and won the rebounding battle, which was huge. It was also great to see great bench energy and that led to production from our bench. This was a big win and one we need to build on over the rest of the season."

Funkhouser finished the game 9-of-11 at the foul line, coming within three free-throw attempts of reaching the top 10 in school history in that category, while Grider went a perfect 6-for-6 and Heath-Granger tossed in three of four tries. Goshen was 20-of-23 (87.0 percent) at the line after halftime, augmenting an offense that went 13-of-21 (61.9 percent) inside the arc.

Mount Vernon Nazarene forced nine turnovers in the second half, nearly leveling the giveaway count for the game despite Billy Geschke and Ben Cotton matching and setting, respectively, their season highs in steals. Heath-Granger's two strips were his 58th and 59th of the season, pulling him into ninth on GC's single-season steal list and within three of 200 for his career.

Grider's first point of the game pulled put him north of 1,200 for his career, the 13th Goshen player to reach that milestone and second member of the 2017-18 team (Billy Geschke has 1,418).

Geschke and Grider have combined for 2,639 career points, the third-most ever by a pair of classmates. Errick McCollum II and Nate West Jr. had 3,898 when they graduated in 2010, four years after Eric Walsh and Jordan Buller combined for 3,444.

The Cougars shot 17-for-39 (43.6 percent) with five three-pointers in the second half. The Maple Leafs came out ahead on the glass, however, grabbing 37 boards to MVNU's 30, and shot 14-for-26 (53.8 percent) in the final 20 minutes to boot.

The Maple Leafs play two of their last three games on the road beginning with a visit to Taylor University in Upland on Saturday. A win would pull Goshen within one game of the team it's chasing in the conference standings and likely push the tiebreaker into GC's side of the ledger as well; it would also be the Maple Leafs' first win at Taylor since 2010. Tip-off is set for 3 p.m. at Odle Arena following the women's game at 1.