ANNAPOLIS, Md.—Lance Tejada scored 22 points to lead five Lehigh players in double figures as the Mountain Hawks (12-6, 5-2 in the Patriot League) defeated Navy (6-12, 3-4), 85-74, in front of 1,294 fans at Alumni Hall in Annapolis. Lehigh scored 33 points off 20 Navy turnovers, while the Mountain Hawk bench outscored Navy's, 30-4.
 
"The story of the game was our turnovers and them scoring off our turnovers," said Navy head coach Ed DeChellis. "That's the difference in the game.  Lehigh is a very explosive team, they are very good on offense. We had to keep the game in the low 70s and we didn't do that.  We have no defense for turnovers."
 
Junior center Evan Wieck led Navy with a career-high 19 points and a career-high 15 rebounds giving him a double-double in back-to-back games after going the first 80 games of his career without one.
 
"I thought Evan Wieck was an animal tonight. Fifteen rebounds, nine offensive rebounds, but that's all we had rebounding tonight. Our other guys really didn't rebound the ball," said DeChellis. "Evan is a hard worker. It's amazing what you can do when you work hard. Evan is a very hard worker. He works hard in the weight room and he works hard in practice.  We throw a million balls to him before practice every day.  He's one of the first guys at practice every day and he will do whatever you ask him to do."
 
Navy did a great job defensively against the number one three-point shooting team in the nation. Lehigh entered the night shooting 47 percent from three, four percent better than anybody else in the country, but Navy held them to 7-26 (26.9 percent) from three.
 
"If you told me that we would hold them to 27 percent shooting from 3 and outrebound them, I would have told you we had a pretty darn good chance of winning that game," said DeChellis. "We scored 74 points with having 20 turnovers. We were pretty good offensively when we got it on the rim, but we had 20 times where we didn't get it on the rim."
 
Navy went on an 11-5 run to cut Lehigh's lead to one point at 56-55 with 10:28 remaining on a Hasan Abdullah layup, but Luke Loehr fouled Lehigh's Pat Andree on a three-point shot on the ensuing possession and Andree made two free throws to put Lehigh up three.
 
Loehr came down a missed a three and on the other end committed a flagrant one foul on James Karnick.  Karnick made both free throws and then scored on a lay-up and in a blink of an eye Lehigh was up seven at 62-55 and Navy never got closer than six points the rest of the night.
 
Abdullah scored a team-high 20 points for the Mids and handed out six assists, while Cam Davis added 15 points and John Carter Jr. had 14 points.  Wieck, Carter, Abdullah and Davis combined for 68 of Navy's 74 points.  Starter George Kiernan and reserves Josiah Strong, Isaiah Burnett, Greg Summers, Luke Loehr, Danny Ogele and Richard Njoku combined for six points in 70 minutes of action.
 
"I thought Hasan played well tonight and John Carter had a really good first half, but I have no answer for the turnovers when you just throw the ball to the other team," said DeChellis.  "We made some foolish plays. I have a unique saying, throw it to the open man.  How about that, just throw it to the open man. Don't try and do stuff you can't do. We tried to make hard plays."
 
"It's hard to win games when you give up 33 points on turnovers and 24 points on free throws," said Wieck.  "If we could just control our mistakes, it would have been a different game."
 
Andree added 16 pints and six assists for the Mountain Hawks, while Kyle Leufroy had 15 points and six boards.  James Karnik chipped in 14 points and five rebounds, while Caleb Bennett was the fifth Lehigh player in double figures with 12.
 
Navy will travel to Holy Cross (2-5 in the Patriot League) on Saturday to take on the Crusaders in a 3 PM.  Navy is currently in a three-way tie for fifth place with American and Loyola.