FAIRFAX, Va. –– Otis Livingston II scored 30 points to pace George Mason (6-6) to an 84-63 victory over the Navy (3-7) men's basketball team Friday night at EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Va.
 
"We had a real hard time tonight guarding Livingston," said Navy head coach Ed DeChellis.  "He is a dynamic scorer and we had a really hard time keeping him under control, obviously.  It is not as if we didn't know he was a good player; we just had a hard time when it came down to it in containing him and keeping him from the basket and his spraying the ball to other guys."
 
Navy dug a hole for itself right at the start of the game, falling behind 10-2 after three minutes and 20-7 nine minutes into the contest.  The Mids were just 3-16 shooting during that opening stretch while the Patriots were 7-10 during that same span.
 
Nagy started to get into a rhythm in the middle part of the half as a 7-0 run highlighted by back-to-back triples from Ryan Pearson (Sr., Richmond, Va.) and George Kiernan (Sr., Hinsdale, Ill.) pulled the Mids to within six points at 20-14 with nine minutes still to play.  It was again a six-point game at 25-19 when George Mason closed the half on a 14-3 run to take a 39-22 cushion into the locker room.
 
"In the first half," said DeChellis, "I thought they (George Mason) made three or four baskets as the shot clock was going off.  We save the ball, throw it in, they grab it and toss in a three.  We had some crazy plays in the first half, but they are a good basketball team and have some guys who can score the ball.  We didn't do a good job defensively.
 
"It takes us awhile to get up to the speed of the game (against a team like George Mason).  We just don't play the same speed; we don't see it every day."
 
The Mids made eight field goals in the first half with five of them coming from three-point land.  Navy shot 27.6 percent from the field as a whole in the first 20 minutes, with George Mason sinking 13-26 shots from the floor for an even 50-percent effort.
 
Navy started to chip away at the gap in the early part of the second half and winnowed the difference down to 10 points at 46-36 with 15:36 still to play.  It was a 13-point game at 54-41 when the Patriots scored 11 of the next 12 points to extend their lead out to 65-42 with nine minutes showing on the clock.  The Mids could only close to within 15 points over the rest of the game.

"Every time we got it kind of close," said DeChellis, "whenever we needed to get a stop or we needed something good to happen, it just never happened.  We wanted it to happen; it just didn't."
 
George Mason shot 53.3 percent (16-30) from the field in the second half, an effort that included a 7-13 showing from three-point range.  Navy shot 38.7 percent (12-31) from the floor after halftime, with the Mids converting 4-13 three-point attempts.
 
George Mason ended the game outshooting Navy 51.8%-33.3%.  The Patriots made 11 triples to nine for the Mids. 
 
"We missed a lot of one-foot shots," said DeChellis.  "Layups in the first five to seven minutes; making those makes the game interesting."
 
George Mason held a 40-31 edge on the glass, but Navy recorded nine second chance points to five for the Patriots.  The Mids also held an 18-7 advantage in points scored after turnovers.
 
Livingston was 11-17 from the field, 4-8 from three-point range and 4-5 from the foul line in scoring his 30 points.
 
Navy was led by Hasan Abdullah (Jr., Birmingham, Ala.) with 16 points, four assists and four steals.  Both he and Kiernan accounted for a trio of three-point field goals, with the latter ending the game with 13 points.  Also scoring in double figures was Cam Davis (So., Battlefield, Mo.) with 11 points.
 
Navy will close its non-league slate with a Dec. 30 game at Cornell.
 
"I think we have played a very hard schedule," said DeChellis.  "We may have overscheduled.  We tried to challenge the team.  We are a very young team.  As soon as we go to the bench we are putting in a lot of freshmen and sophomores.  That's a challenge, and we have played most of them on the road.  We haven't had a home game since December 1 and still have one more to go.  That's a little challenging, especially for a young team.  But it just is what it is. 
 
"We have to make progress. We have to get guys to play a little better.  As soon as we get one guy playing a little better then someone else doesn't.  We are a team that needs to hit on all cylinders to be successful.  Right now we are having a tough go of it.  At Delaware, we hit on all cylinders and played pretty well and won the game."