By BILL ALBRIGHT

MANSFIELD -- The first five minutes. Any coach will tell you those periods are many times crucial in the outcome of a basketball game. During the opening five minutes of the game, Kutztown outscored Mansfield 17-6 and in the five minutes to begin the second half, it was another Golden Bear advantage of 10-7.

Take those 10 minutes out of the picture, and for 30 of the 40 minutes in the game, the Mountaineers outscored their guests by a 48-38 margin, only to fall by the final of 65-61 in PSAC quarterfinal playoff action Tuesday night at Decker Gymnasium. Stephen Dennis and Julius Gray led all scorers in the game with 24 points apiece.

“This one is going to be hard to swallow,” said MU head coach Rich Miller. “We really battled and I thought we played hard. I don’t have much to complain about defensively because to hold Steven Dennis under his average is an accomplishment in itself compared to how we did with him in the two previous games. We didn’t do much against Julius Gray and I don’t know if it is so much what we didn’t do as he played a really nice game. He worked hard and they ran a lot of nice sets for him.”

For Mansfield, three players hit for doubles led by Yuseff Carr with 20 points. Joining Carr in doubles were Ryan Callahan with 18 and Justin Simmons with an even dozen.

“If this was my last game and we lost at this point, yes it was a tough way to go out,” said Callahan who reached 1,000 points earlier in the season. “It (his career) was going to end at some point, but the guys I played with this year and last year which was my first year here were some of the best guys I have ever played with. It has been one of the best times of my life and I have absolutely no regrets at all.”

During the regular season, both teams successfully defended its own territory, the Mounties winning 94-87 at Decker, while the Golden Bears turned the tables on the Red & Black with an 81-69 win on their home floor.

However, in the “rubber” game, the Golden Bears turned the tables on the Mounties to advance in the conference playoffs, while the Mountaineers season might have come to a screeching halt with the loss.

After a pair of ties out of the block, the Mounties took a 6-4 lead on a lay-up by Yuseff Carr. However, that is when the Golden Bears turned on the jets as they ripped off 13 unanswered points for a 17-6 lead before Ryan Callahan temporarily stopped the Mansfield bleeding with a pair of driving lay-ups.

“We came out and tried to play a little zone at the beginning of the game,” said Miller. “We hadn’t done that against them. We watched some other teams have success against them by playing a zone. We tried to do that, and as it turned out, it was a bad idea.”

The Kutztown lead stayed in the 11-14-point range until they pushed their advantage to 30-16 with 5:10 left in the first half.

Picking up the tempo on both ends of the floor, the Mounties went on a tear that netted them a 10-0 run to close out the half with the board reading Kutztown 30, Mansfield 26.

With the shooting disparity at halftime, the Mountaineers had to feel pretty good only being down by four as the Golden Bears shot 54 percent from the floor to just 25 percent for Mansfield.

“For us to hang around the way we shot the ball is a testament to how hard our guys played,” said Miller. “We just never got clicking on offense, but we kept battling and battling, hoping that eventually we could bang a few shots. Ryan Callahan was able to do that a couple of times and Yuseff also did it a few times, but overall, we just never got going on offense.”

For the game, the shooting differential remained pretty much the same as Kutztown held a 52-31 percent edge in shooting from the floor.

“Any way you look at it, we just didn’t shoot well,” said Miller. “You hate to simplify things like that, but I can’t say it any other way than that. It is a simple game, but you have to make shots, whether they are lay-ups, 3s or 15-footers. The way we shot just isn’t going to get it done, especially against a team of their caliber.”

Leading by four, the Golden Bears began the second half in much the same fashion as they did the first period as they outscored the Mounties by a 14-7

margin to open up a 44-33 lead with slightly less than 15 minutes remaining.

But here come the Mountaineers one more time.

Again, working hard on both ends of the floor, Mansfield ripped off 10 unanswered points for a 47-49 deficit.

But as they had done earlier, the Golden Bears weren’t about to let the game get away from them as they regained the momentum by closing out the game with a 10-8 edge to set the final.

Even with the loss, there is a chance that the Mountaineers might still have some basketball to play before they pack it in until next season.

“I hope this isn’t it for us,” said Miller. “We still have a chance to get a NCAA bid and I hope this isn’t it because these guys deserve to play a little more basketball. I received a lot of e-mails, text messages and coach (Tom) Ackerman even called and wished us good luck. They are just a great group of guys and I just hope this isn’t it for them.”