Campbell boys basketball pulls away in 4th quarter to beat Belmont (video)

LITCHFIELD - For two dozen minutes Monday night, the boys basketball teams from Campbell and Belmont high school battled to a stalemate.

With the fourth quarter underway, and the game tied at 41, the Cougars found the next gear to give themselves something they hadn't had most of the night: the lead.

Back-to-back 3-pointers to start the quarter gave Campbell its largest lead to that point, and the Cougars kept the Red Raiders at a distance the rest of the way, rallying for a 69-60 win to hand Belmont its first loss in Division III action.

Cayden Deleon led the way with 20 points for Campbell, including a 3 that gave the Cougars the lead with just over seven minutes left. Three other players finished in double figures, as Logan Rice had 15 points and Luke Delia scored 14 points.

Matthew Haley chipped in with 13 points, including a 3 to follow Deleon's and a layup that made it an 8-0 run for Campbell and a 49-41 lead.

"We had this game circled," Campbell coach Justin DiBenedetto said. "We knew we had the right game plan. We knew when healthy, there’s not a mentally tougher team than us. We know how to respond to runs. I’ve got some really great players who can get to the rim at ease and hit big shots and rebound."

The win comes just 10 days after Campbell lost on the road at Belmont by 19 points, in a game where the Cougars (6-1) were missing Rice and Jack Breton, who was in foul trouble for most of this game.

It looked early on that the teams could be headed toward that kind of game, with Belmont (7-1) taking a 16-4 lead less than six minutes into the game. Campbell closed the game to eight points by the end of the quarter, but chipped away in the second.

Down seven points with 4:50 left in the half, Campbell closed on a 13-6 run, tying the game at 30 on a basket by Rice at the buzzer.

Belmont opened the third with six straight points to go up 36-30 and DiBenedetto took a timeout to settle things down.

"We just went over our defense real quick," the coach said. "We usually play 32 minutes of man (defense), that’s what we’ve done all year. We wanted to pack it in and make things a little tougher for the big guys.

"We weren’t going to shy away from that. We knew if we started pressuring the ball better, that we would make it tough for them."

Campbell did, as it forced Belmont into 24 turnovers to just 16 for the Cougars. Anakin Underhill led the Red Raiders with 31 points while Treshawn Ray added 13 and Keegan Martinez had 10.

"This game and loss is on me," Belmont coach Tony Martinez said. "I did not do a good enough job preparing them for the zone and the pressure that Campbell brought (Monday). We’ve seen a lot of man-to-man all year. This time of year, teams make adjustments, and I just didn’t make the adjustments. I thought my guys had great effort, we just didn’t execute what we needed to do."

After the Red Raiders' run to open the third, the Cougars answered with a 7-0 spurt to take their first lead of the game, but it was short-lived, as a free throw and a basket by Ray put Belmont back in front. The teams went back and forth the rest of the quarter to send it to the fourth tied at 41.

Campbell stretched the lead to as many as 10 points, including a 62-52 advantage with 1:30 to play, but Belmont was able to hang around. The Red Raiders got within six points on a pair of free throws by Ray with 47.2 seconds left, but the Cougars made enough of their free throws to hang on for the win.