The Dominican University men's basketball team never trailed on Saturday afternoon, picking up an 81-69 win at Aurora University over the Spartans in the Stars' return to action after a more than two-week layoff.  Jackson Smith led the Stars in scoring for the second straight contest, dropping in 19 points, while freshman Dylan Anderson came off the bench to score 18 points in 23 minutes.
 
Defensively, the Stars forced 19 Aurora turnovers and limited the Spartans to just over 36-percent shooting from the field.
 
"There was a hard fought conference road win," commented Mark White, the Stars' head men's basketball coach. "We struggled at times getting into a flow on the offensive end of the floor but we really defended well the entire game."
 
Smith snapped a near three-minute scoreless stretch to open the game with a lay in and then followed that up with a rebound of his own miss and a put-back on the Stars' next possession.  After an Aurora three-pointer, Dennis Handy scored Dominican's next 11 points as the Stars used an 11-2 run to open a 15-5 lead the Stars would not relinquish.
 
Aurora made a couple of runs, including cutting the lead down to three, 40-37, early in the second half, but each time Dominican answered.  The Stars' used a quick 7-0 spurt to push the lead back to double-digits, 47-37 with 14:49 to play in the second and later used an 11-0 run to open their largest lead of the game, 71-54, with just under five minutes to play.
 
The Stars shot 30-for-67 from the field, going 8-for-29 from three, and converted on just 13 of 21 attempts from the foul line but managed to limit the Spartans to just three second chance points on six offensive rebounds.  The converted Aurora's 19 turnovers into 17 points while turning the ball over just 12 times as a team.
 
Tyler Guest and Handy rounded out four in double-figures scoring with 14 and 13 points respectively and Guest adding a game-high 11 rebounds for his fourth double-double effort of the season.
 
For the Spartans, Ha'ashim Keys led four in double-digits with 18 points on 5-for-8 shooting, converting on eight of ten attempts from the charity stripe.  Will Hrubes finished with 12 points while Jarek Hotwagner posted a ten-point, ten-rebound double-double in the loss.
 
Dominican, now 6-5 on the season and 2-4 in the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC), will return to action on Tuesday, hosting the Marian University Sabres for a 7:00 p.m. tipoff at the Igini Sports Forum.