Box Score TOUGALOO, Miss. – The Belhaven men's basketball team had a three game winning streak come to a halt Tuesday night at cross town rival Tougaloo College 72-69. The Blazers trailed 39-31 at halftime and rallied to tie the game at 61-61 with just over four minutes to play in the game. Unfortunately, Belhaven couldn't outscore the Bulldogs down the stretch.

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"Every time we play Tougaloo you can disregard the records because this is a big rivalry game for each team," said Belhaven Head Coach John Aiken. "Tougaloo has been playing well, but we had a chance to help ourselves at the free throw line and weren't able to convert some of those opportunities down the stretch."

Belhaven (4-4) had three players land in double figures led by Jonathan Ratliff with a game high 24 points and 11 rebounds. Ratliff's double double was one of two turned in on Tuesday night by the Blazers. Teammate Curt Hall dropped in 11 points and grabbed nine boards. Deon Bedford was the other Blazer to hit the double digit mark in points with 10.

Free throw shooting turned out to be one of the major factors in the game. Belhaven finished the night 13-25 at the charity stripe (52%) while turning in solid overall shooting performance from the field 27-59 (45.8%). Belhaven out-rebounded Tougaloo 39-20.

Tougaloo (4-7) was guided by Cordaryl Campbell with 20 points followed by Trevis Thomas and Gary Love with 19 and 17 points respectively. Thomas was also the Bulldogs leading rebounder with eight on the night. Campbell was just one behind his teammate with seven. As a team, the Bulldogs connected on 44.4 percent of their shots (20-45) and converted 69.8 percent of their free throws (30-43).

Belhaven will have some time off before hitting the court again on December 20th at the Dalton State Classic. The Blazers will battle Cumberland University (TN) on Friday night at 6:00 PM followed by a rematch with Dalton State on Saturday December 21st at 8:00 PM.

"We have a couple of weeks to prepare for two really good teams in Cumberland and Dalton State," said Aiken. "It will be a very good test for us, but we have a lot to look forward to I think we are playing well. We just have to figure out a way to play for 40 minutes. We'll bounce back from this and be ready to go again on December 20th."