HELENA, Mont. - The Carroll Men's Basketball team earned a season sweep over Rocky Mountain College with an 87-76 win in the third and final meeting between the two teams on Thursday evening at the PE Center.

For the second time in three games, the Fighting Saints (13-14, 8-6) got a career-high effort from Isaiah Crane (Portland, Ore. / R-FR). Crane's 38-point night powered the Saints to another double-digit win over the Battlin' Bears.

Rocky grabbed an early lead, and would hold onto it for the first five minutes of the game. A Senior Night layup from Murat Guzelocak (Istanbul, Turkey / R-SR) would give the Saints the lead with 14:43 remaining in the half, and Carroll would not look back. Isaac Round (Northampton, England / FR) quickly moved the lead well in favor of the Saints, burying three's on each of Carroll's next three possessions. Round was electric from deep in the half. The Englishman knocked down six three-pointers without missing to lead the Saints with 18 points in the opening frame. 

By the 4:52 mark of the first half, Carroll had blown the game wide open. Kellen Harrison (Bozeman, Mont. / FR) tipped-in a put-back attempt in transition, giving the Saints their largest lead of the game at 25 points.

Rocky would go on to end the half on an 11-2 run, but the Saints would hit the locker room with a comfortable 45-26 lead at the break.

Round finished the half 6-7 of the floor with all 18 of his team-high points coming beyond the arc, while Isaiah Crane would go 7-12 from the floor over the opening 20 minutes for 15 points. Derek Kramer (Bellevue, Wash. / R-JR) added eight points and five rebounds in the opener.

The opening frame was another strong shooting performance for the Saints as a whole, with the team going 18-37 from the field (48.6 percent).

Carroll continued to control the game throughout the first 10 minutes of the second half. Crane opened the frame with a tough and-one, kick-starting what would be one of the most impressive individual performances in recent Carroll history.

The Saints hovered around a 20-point advantage throughout the early stages of the half, stretching the lead back out to 24 points on an emphatic breakaway dunk from Isaiah Moore (Fairfield, Calif. / JR) off a steal at the 11-minute mark.

By the 8:36 mark, Rocky would half the Carroll advantage, 69-57. Crane took over the game in the late stages, however, scoring 12 of his 38 points down the stretch.

The Bears trimmed the lead to as little as nine points with 1:30 remaining, but Carroll refused to allow them back into to game fully, closing out the season sweep with clutch shooting at the line.

Crane's 38-point effort was the single highest scoring mark for any Saint since the 2018-19 season (11.23.18 - Dane Warp, 45 points vs Salish-Kootenai), and the most points by a Carroll player in a Frontier Conference game since 2016 (2.4.16 - Match Burnham, 39 points vs Rocky).

Round didn't score in the second half, but still finished with the second-most points in the game with 18. Kramer finished his night with 10 points and six boards, while Moore added nine points and four rebounds.

The Saints finished the game shooting an even 50 percent from the floor (32-64) while holding Rocky to just 39 percent as a team.

The Bears had five players score in double-figures, led by Omari Nesbit's 17 points in the loss.

With both Providence and Montana Tech winning on Thursday, the Saints will not have a shot at the Frontier Conference regular season championship. A win on Saturday at MSU-Northern, however, will lock them into the No. 3-seed at the upcoming Frontier Conference tournament.

Visit www.carrollathletics.com for a preview of that MSU-Northern game, and to stay up to date with everything going on in Carroll Athletics.

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