The men’s basketball team defeated Salve Regina on Monday night, 69-60, for its second straight win after six consecutive losses. Wesleyan is now 8-12 on the season and has passed last year’s win total (seven). Nick Pelletier ’08 recorded his second straight double-double with 21 points and 13 rebounds, and Stan Grayson ’09 added 16 points and 11 rebounds. The Cards did not trail past the 16:53 mark and led by as many as 14 in the contest.

Down 5-4 early, the Cardinals responded by scoring 11 of the game’s next 16 points to go up 16-9 with 12:25 to play. Salve Regina twice cut Wesleyan’s lead to two points but was unable to get any closer, and the teams headed to the locker rooms with the Cardinals up 35-29.

Wesleyan led 41-31 early in the second, when Salve Regina sank a layup to cut its deficit to eight with 16:22 to go. The Seahawks scored just seven points over the next eight minutes, all coming on free throws. Salve Regina missed nine consecutive shots during the drought, during which Wesleyan’s lead ballooned to 13. However, the Seahawks then went on a 10-0 run to slice the Cardinals’ lead to 53-50 with 4:47 to play. Following a timeout, Wesleyan scored five straight and later made seven of eight free throws down the stretch to secure the win.

The win was just the Cardinals’ second of the year at home. Wesleyan currently sports a home record of 2-7 (compared to 6-5 away from Middletown). Head Coach Jay Johnson noted that the win was crucial heading into a home NESCAC weekend.

“We hadn’t shown an incredible amount of success at home so finding a way to win at home is exactly what we needed for the team,” Johnson said.

Wesleyan must now turn its attention to a crucial NESCAC weekend. The NESCAC’s top two teams—Trinity (4-2 NESCAC) and Amherst (6-0 NESCAC)—come to town in the Cardinals’ last regular-season home action of the year. Currently, at the rough midway point of the season, Wesleyan sits at 1-4 in conference play, compared to 2-3 at the same time last year. (The Cardinals went on to finish 2-7 in the NESCAC last season.)

While the Cardinals have played solid defense all season, they have had little success on the offensive end. Wesleyan currently averages 62.7 points per game, the lowest in the NESCAC. The Cardinals’ poor free throw shooting does not help; at 62.8 percent, Wesleyan is last in the conference in that category. Wesleyan’s best free-throw performance of the season, when they shot 83.3 percent from the line, came in its worst loss of the season, an 85-60 defeat to Bates last weekend. However, Johnson does not believe that free throws will pose a problem down the stretch.

“Our guys know that to win games it’s not about the big things, it’s about the little things,” Johnson explained. “We look forward to our guys having the opportunity to be put in that spot [on the line late] to help us win a game.”

Also, the combined 149 points in the Cardinals’ past two games is the team’s highest two-game stretch of the season. Scoring will be at a premium this weekend: Amherst is first in the conference with 82.0 points per game, and Trinity is fifth with 75.8. Wesleyan has lost its last four to Trinity by an average of 21 points per game. Likewise, the Cardinals will look to snap a 15-game losing streak to the Lord Jeffs and avenge an 85-63 loss at Amherst earlier this season.