Grantham, PA - The Cairn men's basketball team dropped a close 69-66 contest against the Messiah Falcons on the road on Thursday night. Gerroid Doughty II scored 23 points in the loss with an 8-18 effort from the field including a 5-9 effort from downtown. The Highlanders led by as many as eight points early in the second-half, but the Falcons closed strong en route to the three-point victory.

On paper before the game these two squads looked to be extremely evenly matched on paper with both teams playing similar styles and with similar statistics across the board. Both teams love to shoot threes and it was the Highlanders that had the hotter hand from downtown. In the game Cairn went 9-24 from beyond the arc (37.5%) compared to the Messiah 1-15 effort (6.7%).

Unfortunately it was turnovers that got the best of the Highlanders throughout the evening. Cairn lost the turnover battle 18-6 and as a result the Falcons scored 16 points off turnovers compared to just four for the Highlanders.

Despite the imbalance in the turnover department, the Highlanders looked to be in control for a large majority of the game. Cairn opened the scoring with a three by Doughty followed by a triple from Zamroz and another from Doughty to take an early 9-6 lead.

The game stayed within three-point margin either way for a majority of the first-half with the Highlanders holding the upper hand for most of the half. A layup from Zachary Dolton with 5:08 remaining in the half put Cairn up 24-20.

Later Chris Uhrich extended the lead to five with a layup with under three minutes in the half. Uhrich later knocked down a free throw in the final minute of the half to give Cairn a 29-25 lead heading into the half.

An early bucket by Messiah's Josh Clippinger cut the lead to just two before a quick 8-2 gave the Highlanders their largest lead of the night at 39-31 less than 3:30 into the half.

Over the course of the next six minutes the Falcons trimmed away at the Cairn lead and on their only three of the contest took the lead with 10:53 remaining in the half at 43-41. Doughty stopped the change in momentum with a layup on the other end to tie the game back up.

With the score now tied at 43-43, Messiah and Cairn played an even battle for the next nine minutes. Both teams lead at times, but neither team took control as the margin was less than four points until the final minute.

After JD Zamroz made two free throws to tie the game with just under two minutes remaining at 59-59, the Falcons went on a 6-0 run to take their largest lead of the game. While Cairn cut the lead to as few as three points on two occasions in the final 10 seconds on a Zachary Jackson three and a Jullian Collazo at the buzzer, it wasn't enough as Messiah made all six of their free throws in the final minute to seal the three-point victory.

The loss ends the 2016 portion of the Highlanders season. Cairn will set its sights on a fresh start on 2017 when they travel to Centenary University on Jan. 3 for a 8:00 p.m. tip-off.