Box Score

Frank Brown's second-half outburst helped propel the University of Regina's men's basketball team to a 78-72 win over Mount Royal on Saturday night at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health & Sport.

Brown scored 10 points in the third quarter, then accounted for 14 of Regina's 23 points in the fourth as the Cougars went on an 11-4 run over three minutes late in the game to take the lead for good. The win for the Cougars – their second in a row and fourth in their last five games – improves the U of R's Canada West record to 5-7 on the season.

Mount Royal's loss overshadowed an impressive performance from third-year guard Awet Abraha, who piled up a game-high 33 points to set a team record for most points in a single game in the school's brief history at the CIS level.

Brown also had nine rebounds to fall just short of collecting the game's lone double-double, while Connor Burns scored 16 points for Regina and added six rebounds. Antonio Tate gave head coach James Hillis a spirited 13 minutes off the bench, scoring six points including a late driving layup that put the Cougars up six with under two minutes left.

Regina guard Brendan Hebert led all players with nine assists.

Abraha was 9-for-15 from the field and went to the free throw line 18 times, hitting 13 of them. Manok Akwl had 10 points, six assists, and a game-high five steals for Mount Royal, which falls to 3-9 on the season.

The first quarter was all Mount Royal, as Abraha had 11 points in the first 10 minutes alone and the visitors led 24-13 through the first quarter. Regina opened the second quarter with nine consecutive points to cut the lead to two, and after going into halftime trailing by three the Cougars made a third-quarter run that turned the tide in the ball game.

Mount Royal led by seven in the early stages of the third, but Regina went on a 12-2 run to take their first lead of the game. The two teams went back and forth down the stretch, trading leads five times in the fourth quarter and neither team leading by more than four points until Tate's late layup gave Regina a six-point advantage with just under two minutes left.

A bucket down low by Olawafemi Ogun and two free throws by Abraha cut the deficit to just two points for Mount Royal with 29 seconds left, but Tate hit two big free throws shortly after to make it a two-possession game.

After forcing a Mount Royal turnover on the ensuing possession, Regina got two more free throws from Brendan Hebert in the waning seconds to put the game away.

Mount Royal will host Manitoba and Winnipeg next weekend in Calgary, while the Cougars will head to the West Coast for games against Victoria and UBC.

NOTES: Access7 will rebroadcast the game on Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. following the conclusion of the women's broadcast.