SAN RAFAEL, Calif. – Jumping ahead early in their Monday night battle against Dominican, Academy of Art men's basketball used their early momentum to separate themselves from the Penguins to surge towards a Pacific West Conference win with a 69-64 final score.

"Tonight we had a great start to the game getting up 17-1 and I wish we could have kept that momentum for the entirety of 40 minutes," said Head Coach Scott Waterman. "The great thing is we got the win and have another opportunity Thursday to get momentum going into March."

As ART U held advantages by as many as 12-0 and 17-1 in the opening frame, the Penguins did show a strong performance to try and battle back, but the Urban Knights held Dominican off throughout the first half to obtain a 34-27 lead at the break. Spreading the ball around, the Knights had eight different members scoring a bucket in the starting period with the squad collectively collecting 23 rebounds. 

Starting the second half off with a new look, Dominican, who dropped to 4-12 in conference play and 9-15 overall, shot above 60 percent from the field for the first 10 minutes of the closing frame to fight their way back into the matchup, as the Penguins tied it up at 40-40. As the Knights responded to DU's perseverance with an 8-0 lead of their own to regain the lead at 48-40, the Penguins got back within three numerous times, but could never close the gap as they could only watch as ART U would sink clinching free throws to secure the 69-64 victory.

With the contest resulting in a true team win for ART U, the Knights improved to third place in the PacWest standings with their 10-5 conference record as they're now 14-9 overall. Senior guard Rodney Munson led the team with 14 points on the day, and five other Knights joined with eight points or better. While junior forward Robbie Armbrester had nine points, he collected the team-high in rebounds (8) while tacking on four more steals to his debut campaign.

With four games to go in the regular season, ART U will start off the last quartet of contests battling against Hawaii Pacific this Thursday, Feb. 20 with a 1:15 p.m. tip-off for their ALS Awareness Day game.