Manhattan 90

Fordham 77

The final tally looked like this: four technical fouls, a half-dozen shoving/shouting matches, three players fouled out and a personal foul called for every field goal scored.

Amid it all, Manhattan and Fordham played basketball for the 96th time last night (the Jaspers lead the series, 49-47). And though Manhattan’s talent and toughness trumped in a 90-77 victory at Draddy Gymnasium, the visitors from the Atlantic 10 showed enough spark to produce a positive sign from its third straight loss.

“I found out something about my team,” Fordham coach Dereck Whittenburg said. “I saw some fight that we haven’t seen in our first two games.”

The evidence of that fight produced a few near-fights which stained this edition of the intra-borough rivalry. From the outset, players clashed, and officials futilely tried to control them.

Michael Haynes and Jaspers freshman Guy Ngarndi tangled arms chasing a rebound. Haynes and Jason Benton bumped chests during a dead ball, resulting in a Benton technical.

Late in the game, Mushon Ya’Akosi, the Rams’ 6-foot-11 center, wagged a menacing finger at Kenny Minor, the Jaspers’ 5-foot-8 point guard.

The most telling moment came with 7:38 left, when star Jaspers guard Luis Flores, as peaceful as the brothers who run his college, drew a technical from overzealous official Mike Stephens.

“They play with a lot of intensity, and they weren’t going to back down,” Flores said of Fordham. “We weren’t going to back down either. That’s where the technicals came from.”

When the baloney occasionally took a back seat to basketball, the Jaspers thrived early in the second half by accelerating the game’s pace. Flores and point guard Jason Wingate teamed for eight straight points to push Manhattan’s lead to 50-29 with 18:11 remaining. The Rams never got closer than 12 points.

All five Jaspers starters scored in double figures, led by senior Dave Holmes with 22 and Flores with 20. Fordham sophomore John Blackgrove led all scorers with 27, 19 of which came in the helter-skelter second half.

“We’re playing harder,” Blackgrove said. “We worked on blocking out and getting out and running, and we did that.”

But the Jaspers overcame those improvements to stay undefeated (2-0) and showed a little fight of their own on the way.

“I want my guys to play with fire and emotion,” said Jaspers coach Bobby Gonzalez, a technical recipient himself. “But we need to keep our heads out there.”