COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. – The Ursinus Men's Basketball team opened the 2024-25 season with a wire-to-wire 99-65 win over Immaculata on Friday night in the opening round of the Bear Bash Tip-Off Tournament at Helfferich Hall.
 
 
The Bears win tonight marked its sixth straight season opening win dating back to the 2018-19 season and will move on to its Championship Game of the inaugural Bear Bash Tip-Off Tournament tomorrow afternoon.
 
 
Sophomore Luke Nieman led all scorers with a career-high 19 points behind making six three-pointers and grabbed three rebounds. Junior Mohamed Toure flirted with his career-high by scoring 18 points behind 6-of-10 shooting and was just short of a double-double with nine rebounds. Senior Trevor Wall compiled 12 points, five rebounds, and five assists while sophomore Patrick Downes plus first-year Porter Kelly added 11 points apiece. Junior Nick Nocito recorded a career-high 11 assists which was the most by a Bear since Brian Rafferty had 11 against RPI in the 2014-15 season while scoring seven points.
 
 
The Bears came out red hot to start as they made their first six field goal attempts to go up 17-7 at the 16:42-mark with five of those field goals being three-pointers. Nieman had half of his three-pointers in that stretch as well. A layup from senior Cole Grubbs put Ursinus up 19-7 at the 15:19-mark and the Bears continued to maintain over a two possession lead for the remainder of the first half. The Mighty Macs only got within seven points the rest of the way as the Bears hot-shooting kept them ahead comfortably. Downes gave the Bears their largest lead of the first half at 48-32 in the final minute and they carried a 49-34 advantage into halftime. Ursinus went 54.5 percent (18-of-33) from the field and 47.4 percent (9-of-19) from three-point range in the first half.
 
 
Ursinus hit the ground running in the second half by scoring the first six points and picked up where they left off with its strong shooting. Immaculata pulled within 15 points at 56-41 with 16:39 left in the first half, but the Bears scored 13 unanswered to go up 69-41 at the 13:33-mark that ultimately put the game away. Ursinus did not let its lead fall below 25 points the rest of the way and took a lead as large as 34 points in the final minute to finish off its night.
 
 
The Bears shot 57.4 (35-of-61) from the field and 45.2 percent (14-of-31) from three-point range. Ursinus went 15-of-23 (65.2%) from the free throw line and held a 34-16 edge in fast break points. The Bears also held a commanding 45-24 advantage in rebounds. Meanwhile, the Mighty Macs shot 38.3 percent (23-of-60) from the field and just 25.9 percent (7-of-27) from deep. Immaculata shot a solid 80 percent (12-of-15) from the free throw line.
 
 
John Proctor led the Mighty Macs with 14 points while Dinero Washington added 12 points.
 
 
Ursinus is back to work tomorrow, November 9th as they will host Wilkes in the Bear Bash Championship game at 3:00 p.m.