Box Score

Seattle, WA -- The Academy of Art University men's basketball team got their first chance to show off some of their new pieces on Friday night, but despite a strong first half and a stellar performance from senior Ameer Shamsud-din, the Urban Knights fell to No. 9-ranked Seattle Pacific 85-65 in the first of two games at the Sodexo Tipoff Classic. Shamsud-din, who was just named to the Preseason All-PacWest Team earlier this week, exploded for 27 points on 10-of-16 shooting. Rodrigo Maza recorded his first double-double for the Knights as well, finishing with 14 points and 11 rebounds.

"We got some key performances tonight that allowed to stay in there with a good Seattle Pacific team," said head coach Julius Barnes. "Ameer and Rodrigo stepped up tonight. He came out a little slow after halftime, but at the end of the day, he had a double-double, and that means something. "

Barnes, making his regular season coaching debut, went up against one of the top schools in the West Region on their home court, and saw his senior guard from Portland return to the Northwest and explode out of the blocks. Shamsud-din scored the first five points of the game of the night for ART U, but the Falcons took the lead early and held it for most of the first half. Two free throws from Jobi Wall made it a 10-point lead for SPU, but the Urban Knights continued to battle, getting back-to-back layups from Maza to cut it to 29-26. Seattle Pacific pushed it to eight again with 1:37 to go, but it was Maza with the free throw and Shamsud-din with the buzzer-beating trey to make it 34-30 at the half. The two combined for 24 of the team's 30 points in the opening period, with Maza coming up just short of a double-double in the first 20.

The offense hit a rough patch, despite Maza making the first shot out of the break to cut the lead to 34-32. The Knights got another basket from Akil Johnson with 17:38 left, but then Seattle Pacific made their move, scoring 17 straight points to take a big lead at 55-34 with 10 minutes to go. The Knights chipped away for the rest of the game, but the damage was done. Alex Carmon got all of his points in the second half, and freshman Bryan Fisher made two from beyond the arc down the stretch to start his Urban Knights career, but the final horn sounded with the Knights on the wrong end of the scoreboard.

"We played well despite Czar (Robotham) and B.J. (Prema) getting into foul trouble," Barnes said. "The guys did a good job to keep the game close at halftime, and even though the offense stalled a little bit I think we did well. We turned the ball over 19 times. If you do that against a good team, you're going to get in trouble, but we played good basketball for 30 minutes. We've just got to play that way for the whole game."

The Knights played well in the paint, holding even with the Falcons with each teams scoring 26 points under the basket. But Seattle Pacific took advantage of the turnovers mentioned by Barnes, turning those 19 mistakes into 25 points, which proved to be the difference in the game. ART U shot 46.4% from the field, with Shamsud-din leading the way and Maza right behind. They shot 50% from beyond the arc, which bested the 34.8% mark by the Falcons. David Downs led the way for SPU with 20 points, while Jobi Wall also had 16 points for the home team.

"I think we're just glad that we don't have to wait a week to get back out there and redeem ourselves," said Barnes. "We had some guys play a lot of minutes, but that's just the nature of the beast. The guys will go to sleep tonight and will get back out there tomorrow against a pretty good Central Washington team."

The Knights will play Central Washington tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 PM at Brougham Pavilion.