St. Paul, Minn. – The Crown men's basketball team travelled to newly minted NCAA Division I members St. Thomas on Thursday night, hanging with the Tommies for much of the game in the host's first home game as members of the Summit League. 
 
The Storm struggled to score for much of the night, but were equally stingy on the defensive end and more than held their own on the glass, claiming a 44-33 advantage.  Crown held St. Thomas to 41% shooting from the field, but were undone by a cold shooting night with the biggest difference coming from behind the arc.  St. Thomas hit on 15 of 40 attempts from deep, while Crown could only muster four makes in 22 attempts.  

A cagey first few minutes saw the Storm leading 4-3 with almost five minutes gone in the half, but St. Thomas began to hit from beyond the arc and stretched their lead to as many as 13 points on a few occasions in the half before taking a 37-27 lead into the break.  

Crown responded admirably to start the second half, going on a 7-0 run to cut the lead to just three points after less than two minutes.  

Again, the Tommies responded from deep, hitting three straight threes as part of a 9-2 run that saw them control the game the rest of the way.

Despite not being able to draw closer, Crown kept the game within reach, cutting the lead to nine with just over eight minutes remaining.  At that point, St. Thomas had a parade to the free throw line as the Storm struggled to get any calls, being whistled for eight of their 16 fouls in the game over the final eight minutes.  St. Thomas used free throws and a couple more made threes to stretch the final score to 73-53.

"I'm incredibly proud of the way our guys battled defensively and on the glass tonight," noted head coach Luke Herbert.  "We never looked afraid on that end of the floor and acquitted ourselves exceptionally well.  We were a little bit slow to get going on the offensive end of the floor and shot-making was an issue, but I thought we executed a lot of things well and can't wait to open up conference play next weekend."

The Storm are off for over a week before hosting Northwestern and North Central to start UMAC play on December 10^th and 11^th.