Men's Basketball | 2/9/2012 10:29:00 PM

Box Score JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – The No. 2-ranked West Liberty University men's basketball team blew past a couple of significant milestones here Thursday night in a 105-84 rout of Pitt-Johnstown at the UPJ Sports Center. Not only was it the 20th consecutive win for Coach Jim Crutchfield's high-flying Hilltoppers (22-1, 17-0), junior guard Alex Falk – the only returning starter from last season's record-shattering NCAA Division II Elite Eight squad – became the 40th member of West Liberty's 1,000-Point Club. Falk, a 6-4 guard from Sandusky, Ohio, was one of six double-figure scorers in WLU's typically well-balanced attack with 12 points and now has 1,008 career points in Black and Gold. The Mountain Cats (12-10, 10-7) were able to keep things close for most of the first half by shooting a blistering 69 percent from the floor over the first 20 minutes. Nevertheless, the Hilltoppers used a late 13-3 to grab a 54-44 lead just before the break and, even though UPJ's Bill Luther cut the halftime gap to 54-47 with a late 3-pointer, the die had been cast. Unable to keep up their torrid shooting pace, the Mountain Cats could only watch as West Liberty broke the game open in the second half. A Chris Morrow 3-pointer pushed the count to 85-63 as the clock ticked past the 10-minute mark and the lead never dropped below 20 points the rest of the way. Freshman center C.J. Hester continued his monster debut season for the Hilltoppers with his ninth double-double. Hester's 24 points and 13 rebounds were both game-highs but he and Falk received plenty of scoring support. Cedric Harris had a strong game with 22 points and a game-high 7 assists while Morrow finished with 15 points. Keene Cockburn and Tim Hausfeld rounded out the double-figure scorers with 12 and 11 points, respectively. Patrick Grubbs, Nick Novak and Matt Palo all finished with 16 points for Pitt-Johnstown. West Liberty is idle on Saturday but will be back home Monday night to host second-place Alderson-Broaddus in a key WVIAC encounter. Tipoff is set for 7:30 p.m. at the ASRC. GAME NOTES X West Liberty has a four-game lead with five regular-season games remaining in its quest for a third consecutive WVIAC title X The Hilltoppers, who lead the nation in scoring, topped the century mark for the 9th time in the last 10 games Thursday night and shot better than 50 percent from the floor for the 14th time in 23 games X West Liberty is 111-5 (.957) under Crutchfield when shooting 50 percent or better from the floor X The Hilltoppers extended their WVIAC-record conference winning streak to 57 games X This marks the third straight year that West Liberty has put together a winning streak of 20 or more games X The 2009-10 WLU squad had a 22-game run while last year's team won its first 33 games before being upset by BYU-Hawaii in an Elite Eight semifinal