NCAA INTERACTIVE BRACKET
 
DAYTON, Ohio – No. 16 American (22-13, 13-5 PL) fell to No. 16 Mount St.  Mary’s (23-12, 12-8 MAAC), 83-72, on Wednesday during the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament First Four at University of Dayton’s UD Arena.
 
Eagles’ junior guard Geoff Sprouse led the Eagles with 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting from 3-point range. Senior guard Elijah Stephens added 12 points and five assists. Patriot League Championship MVP Matt Rogers left the game due to injury in the first half. He finished with seven points on 3-of-4 shooting.  
 
Mount St. Mary’s shot 57.7 percent from the field, outscoring AU in the paint 40-22 behind 22 points apiece from forwards Dola Adebayo and Jedy Cordilla.
 
Patriot League Champion American played their fourth NCAA Tournament game in program history and first under second-year head coach Duane Simpkins. The 2024-25 Eagles won 22 games, the program’s best mark since the 2010-11 season and two shy of the program’s single-season record.
 
NCAA DI MEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP FIRST FOUR
NO. 16 MOUNT SAINT MARY’S MOUNTAINEERS (23-12, 12-8 MAAC) 83, NO. 16 AMERICAN EAGLES (22-13, 13-5 PL) VS (22-12, 12-8 MAAC) 72
UD Arena/Dayton, Ohio                                                    6:40 p.m. ET (truTV)
BOX SCORE | .PDF GAME BOOK
DAYTON, Ohio – Junior guard Geoff Sprouse scored a team-high 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting from beyond the arc, but No. 16 American fell to No. 16 Mount St. Mary’s in the First Four of the NCAA Tournament.
*Eagles’ senior guard Elijah Stephens scored seven of his 12 points in the second half, connecting on 5-of-8 from the field, in addition to matching graduate student guard Lincoln Ball with a team-high five assists.
*Graduate student guard Colin Smalls and sophomore forwards Greg Jones and Matt Mayock scored nine points apiece for the Eagles, who shot 47.4 percent from the field and 37.1 percent from long distance.
*Patriot League Championship MVP Matt Rogers (Gr. F) left the game twice due to injury and was sidelined for the rest of the game at the 5:28 mark in the first half. He finished with seven points on 3-of-4 shooting and two rebounds.
*Mount St. Mary’s controlled the paint, outscoring the Eagles 40-22 while shooting 57.7 percent from the field.
*Mountaineers’ forwards Jedy Cordilla and Dola Adebayo combined for 31 first-half points to help build a 10-point halftime advantage. The duo scored 22 points apiece, combining to shoot 19-of-26 from the floor.

HOW IT HAPPENED:
First Half
*Smalls hit a pair of 3-pointers during a fast-paced opening two minutes to help AU take an early 8-7 lead.
*An injury to Rogers sidelined him during an 8-2 run by The Mount, with Fr. F Eric Michaels scoring the Eagles’ lone bucket during the more than three-minute stretch to put them in a 15-10 hole.
*Sprouse made two of 3-pointers during an 8-0 run by American to regain an 18-15 lead with 13:17 left in the first half.  
*MSM responded, as Dallas Hobbs scored five points during a 7-2 run to regain the lead with 11:16 left in the half.
*Rogers returned, scoring seven points and grabbing two rebounds before another injury at the 5:28 mark sidelined him for the rest of the game.
*The Eagles kept shooting, with Sprouse and Stephens hitting back-to-back 3-pointers to bring the Eagles within two points, at 36-34.
*Mount St. Mary’s scored 12 of the following 16 points to send American into the break, trailing 48-38.
*Sprouse shot 4-of-6 from beyond the arc to lead AU with 12 first-half points, while Smalls connected on 2-of-4 from deep for an Eagles’ squad that shot 47 percent from 3-point range in the first half.
*Mount St. Mary’s controlled the paint, outscoring the Eagles 22-10 and shooting 60 percent from the floor.
*The first half featured four lead changes, with the score tying four times.
Second Half
*AU and The Mount traded baskets to open the second half before Jones, Stephens and Mayock all connected from deep to bring AU within five points, 56-51, by the 15:11 mark.
*The Mountaineers held American scoreless for more than six minutes, building a 17-point lead at 68-51 with 9:09 left in the game before a layup from Jones broke the slump.
*The Eagles scored nine straight points, including a dunk and a pair of free throws by Mayock, a 3-pointer from Sprouse and a fast break layup from Ball to cut the deficit to 81-72 with 3:20 left in the game.
*Ball’s layup was the final made field goal of the game, with both teams held to a pair of free throws for the final 3:20.
*The Mount finished 14-of-17 from the free-throw line, while AU went 5-of-8 from the charity stripe.  
RECAP: AMERICAN | MOUNT ST. MARY’S
 
POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE EXCERPTS
OPENING STATEMENT
DUANE SIMPKINS: “Really proud of the young men in our program. A number of these guys, a vast majority of them, I did not recruit. I inherited these guys. For them to buy in and trust our staff, was it easy? No, but I had their hearts and their spirits until the very end. That's invaluable as a coach.”
 
“You want to have guys that buy in, hear your message, carry your message out. And the biggest thing -- I was proud of a number of things, but I was proud of how these guys became a player-led team and not a coach-led team this last month, month and a half or so. Proud of my guys.”
 
Q. Matt, last time that you and I spoke, right after the championship win, you told me that you wanted to give your everything to the fans and to the AU community. Can you reflect a little bit over the last five years?
MATT ROGERS: Yeah. As you can see, I tried to give it my all tonight. I feel like I still had a lot left in my heart for these guys because y'all don't know what goes into this process of being a college basketball player. It's really hard. Every day you've got to go to class, practice, and then repeat, repeat, and there's so much hours that go into this.
For me to go out like that, unfortunately, I wish I could have done more for us for the AU community because they deserved an NCAA win. But I fell short today.
But I was proud of the guys and how they responded and how they adapted with me not being out there. They played their hearts out, and I'm just super proud of this team.
 
Q. Geoff, when you see someone you're so close to in Matt Rogers go down, what's the message amongst the guys? And you've got a basketball game to still play, so how do you lock in and keep battling?
GEOFF SPROUSE: Yeah, he does a lot for us offensively. I think the main focus was just sticking together, do what we do every day, trust our work. The coaches believe so much, they have so much trust in us, in our work, in our shooting abilities. So that was really just the main message.
 
Q. You guys shot pretty efficiently from the field tonight. Were you pleased with the shot selections and what you guys were making tonight?
DUANE SIMPKINS: “Yeah, I was pleased with it. Those are the shots that we value, the shots that we work on. What we normally have to accompany that is this guy with his interior presence and then getting to the free-throw line. It's tough to do. We shot eight of them tonight. The possession battle was pretty much even. I think they had one more possession than we did, but they made 14 out of 17 free throws, and we made five out of eight. They made nine threes, we made 13.”
 
“At the end of the day, those points in the paint, they hurt. 40-22 helps you get to the free-throw line. That's where we missed this big guy (Gr. F Matt Rogers) right here.”
POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT | PRESS CONFERENCE VIDEO

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