MISENHEIMER — With USA South conference play right around the corner, the Pfeiffer men’s basketball team snapped a four-game losing streak over the weekend for the squad’s largest win of the 2024-25 season so far.
The Falcons (3-4) reached triple digits on Saturday night for the first time since Jan. 18, 2023, as they pulled out a 104-88 home win over the Regent Royals (1-9) inside Merner Gym.
Junior forward and former North Stanly star Doug Smith led Pfeiffer with a team-high 18 points and 15 rebounds as one of five different Falcons who posted double-digit scoring efforts in the matchup.
Junior forward Justin Gaten (17 points, five rebounds), freshman guard Drake Stewart (12 points, two blocks), and senior guard Alex Cunningham (10 points, one steal) each contributed to Pfeiffer’s point total, while senior guard Daymon Beckwith came off the bench to add 13 points of his own.
A total of 14 different Falcons scored in the contest.
Beckwith currently leads Pfeiffer in scoring with an average of 16.1 points per game; Smith is the squad’s rebound leader at 9.5 boards per game. Cunningham (11.6 points), Gaten (10.5 points), and Smith (10 points) round out the Falcons’ top four scorers by average.
Eighth-year coach Pete Schoch and his Pfeiffer team are hoping to notch their first winning season since they came away from the 2021-22 campaign with a 12-11 record (9-5 USA South); last year’s team posted a 10-15 record (6-8 conf.).
This season, the Falcons began their non-conference schedule with a 2-1 record but then had a trio of consecutive losses prior to the team’s recent victory over Regent.
Pfeiffer now has a break before it travels to Averett (5-4, 0-2 ODAC) on Dec. 31, followed by another break prior to USA South conference play starting on Jan. 7 with a home game against NC Wesleyan (6-5).
Facing Averett on New Year’s Eve, Pfeiffer will look for its first road win of the season — a predicament that hampered the 2023-24 Falcons as they stumbled to a lopsided 4-10 record on the road, despite winning six of their nine home games in Misenheimer.
From there, the Falcons are slated to close out the first few weeks of 2025 with back-to-back road matchups at Southern Virginia (6-2) and Mary Baldwin (4-5) on Jan. 10-11, and then home matchups versus Methodist (4-4) on Jan. 15 and Greensboro (1-9) on Jan. 18.
Pfeiffer has a 42-44 conference record since reclassifying from NCAA Division II to Division III and beginning USA South play during the 2018-19 season.