Huskies reverse another curse

Justine Hunt/Globe StaffNU's Manny Adako (right) gets the ball - and a little arm - on this block of Andrew Keister. (Justine Hunt/Globe Staff)

Another Saturday night win for Northeastern University's men's basketball team, another one for the history books.

After beating Providence College last Saturday for the first time in 82 years, the Huskies posted another big win under third-year coach Bill Coen by defeating Holy Cross for the first time in almost two decades.

After dropping 24 on the Friars in a 70-66 victory in Providence, Matt Janning scored a season-high 27 points to lead the Huskies (3-1) to a commanding 61-49 victory over Holy Cross before a spirited crowd of 2,123 at Matthews Arena.

Janning hit on 7 of 11 field goal attempts, including 4 of 5 from 3-point range, and made 9 of 12 foul shots to help NU record its first win over the Crusaders since 1989.

Nkem Ojougboh was the only other NU player in double figures with 12 points, to go with three rebounds and three blocked shots. Manny Adako tallied 9 points, including 7 in a row in the second half.

"It feels real good, just looking at the history and that we haven't beaten these teams in a while," Janning said. "Coming away with nice wins, where we've played very well in both of them so far, is a token of our work ethic in practice and where we want to go as a team this year."

The Huskies got off to a roaring start by scoring 14 unanswered points, converting 5 of 8 field goals in the first 6 1/2 minutes. A trey by Janning made it 14-0 with 13:14 left.

"We knew we were playing a really good basketball team tonight," said Holy Cross coach Ralph Willard, who lost the services of Colin Cunningham when the senior forward pulled up with a sore back and departed just two minutes into the game. "One of the things we had to do was value the basketball, and obviously that's been an issue for us the last two basketball games, and we didn't do that."

NU converted 21 Holy Cross turnovers into 21 points.

"The other thing we take a lot of pride in is not having the best player on the other team beat us and Janning was just spectacular tonight," said Willard. "We didn't do a good job and we lost him too many times, and when you lose him, he's knocking them down."

After Holy Cross (2-2) missed its first eight field goal attempts, Eric Meister finally got the Crusaders on the board when he tallied a 3-point play on a foul-inducing putback with 12:47 left in the half. It sparked a 21-10 Holy Cross run in which the Crusaders stepped up their intensity on both ends of the floor, converted 8 of 10 field goal attempts, held NU to 3-for-8 shooting, and forced the Huskies to commit four turnovers.

"Fourteen-oh, that's nice to look at on the scoreboard," Janning said. "But I thought we gave up a little bit of intensity there and we did let them back into the game. Once we kind of noticed it, we kicked ourselves in the butt and got ourselves going."

After Lawrence Dixon and Andrew Beinert hit back-to-back treys to pull the Crusaders within 24-21 with 5:58 to go before intermission, Janning answered with a pair of baskets on a fast-break runner and a off-balance leaner from the baseline that made it 28-21. The latter bucket extended Janning's streak of consecutive games with double-digit scoring to 23.

"You got to kill a run somehow, and those baskets fell and we started to pick it up from there," said Janning.

The Huskies went on to lead by as many as 18 (53-35) in the second half.

Holy Cross missed all eight of its 3-point attempts after the break and finished 17 of 47 from the floor (36.2 percent). The Crusaders received 11 points apiece from Adam May and Greg McCarthy, who fouled out with 6:28 to go.

Michael Vega can be reached at vega@globe.com.