The Monmouth College men's basketball team fell behind early and never caught up on Friday, losing at Wartburg 76-52. The Scots will stay in Waverly, Iowa and face Cornell in a non-conference game Saturday at 2 p.m. in the third-place game of the Buzz-Levick Tip-Off Tournament.
 
The Knights jumped out to leads of 5-0 and 17-4 before Yuvraj Sidhu (Coppell, Texas) hit a 3-pointer and Kendall Brasfield (Chicago, Illinois) made a layup. Sidhu hit another 3-pointer to cut the Wartburg lead to 19-12 but the Knights went on a 16-6 run to double up the Scots at 36-18. The teams traded baskets over the final three minutes of the half and Wartburg took a 41-23 lead into the break.
 
Wartburg pushed the lead to 22 in the first five minutes of the second half. The game bounced between 19 and 14 over the next eight minutes before the Knights hit a 3-pointer to go up 67-41 with 6:19 left. Wartburg used a 7-0 lead to go up 76-45 with 2:13 to play before Junior Sylvestre (Fort Myers, Florida) hit a 3-pointer. Buckets from Ryan Adolphson (Avon, Illinois) and Jacob York (St. Peters, Missouri) accounted for the final points of the game as Wartburg won 76-52.
 
Brasfield led the Scots with 14 points on 4-for-11 shooting and 6-for-6 from the free throw line. Sidhu had 11 points, all in the first half and Ganon Greenman (Alpha, Illinois) led the Scots with eight rebounds.
 
MONMOUTH MOMENTS: The Scots played 17 players with 12 logging at least five minutes and 15 taking at least one shot…Monmouth shot 27 percent from the field and 25 percent from deep…The Scots made 17-of-23 free throws…Wartburg scored 42 points in the paint to just 20 by the Scots…Wartburg also had 20 points off 14 Monmouth turnovers and won the battle of the boards 44-38…The Scots will play Cornell in a neutral site game Saturday…The teams meet in Midwest Conference contests on January 18 in Mount Vernon and February 15 in Monmouth.