SALT LAKE CITY – The Westminster men's basketball rallied from a seven-point second half deficit to claim a 91-85 win over No. 18 Rocky Mountain (Mont.) in a Frontier Conference game on Saturday night in the Behnken Field House.
 
Westminster (8-1, 1-1 Frontier) was trying to avoid a 0-2 start in league play with consecutive home losses and the game started like a track meet. The game was tied at 18-18 less than eight minutes into the action with the Griffins never trailing during that time. After falling behind 24-23 at the 10:25 mark, the Griffins went on a 14-4 spurt that saw Casey Evans score five points.
 
Jordan Pryor made a three with 2:28 on the first half clock to push the advantage to its largest of the night at 43-32. After Rocky Mountain (11-5, 0-2) got within 46-40 at halftime, they were able to tie the game on multiple occasions early in the second half. A span of 6:34 midway through the final period saw the visitors with a 15-5 run that gave them their largest lead of the night at 67-60 with 9:01 to play.
 
Pryor and Kenny Woodard then turned the game around for the Griffins as the pair led the team on a 17-1 run over the next four minutes. Pryor scored nine of his game-high 24 points with three triples during the spurt while Woodard made a pair of threes and a layup. They were 6-for-6 shooting during the run and the team held Rocky to six consecutive misses.
 
Rocky got back within 79-78 with 2:13 to play after layups from Tyree Anderson and Zach Hinton that were followed by a three from Taylor Longo. The next Westminster possession saw Evans tip-in his own miss for the Griffins last field goal of the game. The team made 12 straight free throws down the stretch, with Pryor, Evans and Woodard making four apiece.
 
The Griffins finished the game shooting 41.7 percent from the floor and they had a 36-26 edge in points in the paint. They were 10-of-27 (37 percent) from beyond the arc while scoring 21 points from 15 offensive rebounds. They also scored 21 points from 19 Rocky turnovers to overcome 46.4 percent shooting from the Battlin' Bears and 14 made threes.
 
This was the third 20-point game of the season for Pryor and it comes on a night he went 7-of-17 from the field with five treys. Evans finished with a career-high 20 points to give Westminster multiple 20-point scorers in the same game for the first time this season. Evans also pulled in seven rebounds with two assists and on steal in 18 minutes.
 
Woodard finished with 14 points and three assists while Quincy Bair added 13. Nick Jenson grabbed a game-high eight rebounds to go with his six points and career-high six assists.
 
Rocky had six players score in double figures with Anderson and Hinton leading the way with 15 apiece. Longo added 14 and Sian Lane had 12 and four assists.
 
The Griffins will play their next three games on the road over two weekends. They begin the stretch on Jan. 17 with 4 p.m. MT contest at Montana Western in Dillon, Mont.