BOZEMAN — The Rocky Mountain College men's basketball team is riding some kind of hot streak.
After winning four consecutive games — scoring 100 points or more in three of them and taking down NCAA Division II MSU Billings in the other — the NAIA Battlin' Bears defeated another NCAA team Thursday, toppling Montana State 70-62 at Worthington Arena. The game was an exhibition for Rocky but counted as the fourth regular-season loss for the Bobcats.
Rocky trailed briefly after Montana State's Brandon Walker scored the game's first points, but the Battlin' Bears took the lead on an Elliott Brooks 3-pointer moments later and didn't trail the rest of the way.
Brooks made four 3-pointers in the game to finish with 12 points for Rocky, which also put Kael Robinson (18 points), Maxim Stephens (16) and Jesse Owens (10) in double figures. Owens added eight rebounds and four assists.
As a team, Rocky shot 50% for the game (30 of 60). Robinson was 9-of-13 shooting and Stephens made 6 of 10 field goal attempts, as the Bears scored 38 points in the paint and 24 points from beyond the arc in analytically efficient performance. The Bears were 8 of 19 from 3-point range.
Montana State, meanwhile, struggled from the floor, making just 25 of 65 field goals (38.5%) and 7 of 31 3-point attempts (22.6%). Brian Goracke scored a game-high 14 points for the Bobcats, Eddie Turner III had 11 and Tyler Patterson chipped in 10.
The Bobcats will look to regroup before taking on Pac-12 foe Washington on Dec. 5.
Rocky is off until Dec. 9 when it plays at MSU Billings in another exhibition. The Battlin' Bears will then head to Chandler, Ariz., for the Cactus Classic where they will play solid NAIA teams The Master's University (Calif.), Marian University (Ind.) and MidAmerica Nazarene University (Kan.) on Dec. 15, 17 and 18.
