Senior guard Isaiah Rivera scored 17 points to pace five players in double figures as DePaul cruised to a 92-59 nonconference win over Prairie View A&M Thursday night in Chicago.
N.J. Benson came off the bench to produce 15 points and a game-high nine rebounds for the Blue Demons (2-0), while Jacob Meyer posted 13 points, Layden Blocker contributed 12 points, seven assists and six rebounds and JJ Traynor added 11 points and eight rebounds. DePaul shot 47.5 percent (29-of-61) from the field and hit 11-of-33 3-point attempts (33.3 percent).
Division III transfer Nick Anderson paced Prairie View A&M (1-1) with 20 points, seven rebounds and three steals. Orlando Horton Jr. added 13 points for the Panthers, who shot 31.9 percent (22-of-69) from the floor and hit just 2-of-16 3-point attempts.
DePaul — which notched its first winning streak since Nov. 30-Dec. 3, 2022 — opened the night with back-to-back breakaway dunks by Arkansas transfer Blocker and Rivera. Then Rivera swished a 3-pointer to eclipse the 1,000-point mark for his career.
Conor Enright’s driving layup extended DePaul’s early margin to 9-0. Meanwhile, Prairie View A&M missed 10 shots and committed three turnovers on its first 10 possessions before Anderson cashed a fastbreak layup at the 14:37 mark to get the Panthers on the board.
The Blue Demons then committed a brief flurry of turnovers against Prairie View A&M’s ultra-aggressive matchup zone, which allowed the Panthers to pull within 18-12 on Zaakir Sawyer’s putback and free throw with 9:10 left in the first half.
DePaul recovered by firing liberally from 3-point range and reaching over the shorter Panthers to tap rebounds back to the perimeter when necessary. Rivera and Blocker canned back-to-back second-chance 3-pointers, then Traynor added another 3 and an alley-oop jam to pump the Blue Demons’ lead to 29-14 with six minutes to go.
Benson added four dunks in a four-minute stretch — Blocker assisting on three of them — as DePaul extended its lead to 45-20 by halftime.
The second half turned into a track meet as both teams were more than willing to play in transition. DePaul pushed its lead as high as 35 on Rivera’s pair of free throws with 9:02 left that made it 71-36.
DePaul finished 23 of 27 at the line, a dramatic improvement from its 8-of-22 showing in Monday’s overtime win against Southern Indiana.
