By Keith McShea
Canisius put forth a balanced effort, right from the start, to rout rival St. Joe's Saturday afternoon before a near-capacity crowd of about 2,000 at Canisius College's Koessler Athletic Center.
The Crusaders, ranked first in The Buffalo News large school poll, took a 20-7 lead after one quarter and were up, 40-19, at halftime. Canisius' lead rarely dipped below 20 in the second half as it improved to 9-1 and 4-0 in the Monsignor Martin Association.
Stafford Trueheart, a 6-5 sophomore, had a triple-double with 12 points -- including a pair of thunderous two-handed jams in the first half -- along with 13 rebounds and 10 blocks.
Sophomore Howard Washington had 13 points and seven assists while senior Josh Huffman contributed 13 points and eight steals off the bench. Senior Ryan Richards scored 11 while he, Trueheart and junior TJ Wheatley all also had big blocks on the defensive end in the first half.
St. Joe's (6-6), the No. 3 large school, was led by senior Justin Hollins (17 points, four three-pointers) and sophomore Justin Jones (10).
Click here for the box score as well as today's full scoreboard.
Check back to buffalonews.com and the Prep Talk blog for a video report on the game later today as well as a story published Sunday.
Review the play-by-play from the game in the live blog below.
Keep track of the action and contribute to it as well in the blog -- the easiest way to do that is to tweet updates with the #PrepTalkLive hashtag .
We will set up blogs like this throughout the winter, especially on big, busy nights -- we'll monitor games via not only our tweets, but those of high school sports fans and followers who use the #preptalklive hashtag.
We want tweets from all varsity sports every day of the week. As it was throughout the football season, the #preptalklive blog (and hashtag on Twitter) is the place to check out scores from all over Western New York.
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Pregame: As the rivals did last year, Canisius and St. Joe's will play both of their regular season basketball games at Canisius College, and the first of those meetings is this afternoon. A capacity crowd is expected at the Koessler Athletic Center for today's 1 p.m. showdown between No. 1 News large school Canisius (8-1) and No. 3 St. Joe's (6-5).
Follow the action through the live blog below or provide your comments via Twitter using the #preptalklive hashtag.
Today's lineup is not too heavy, but there is another intriguing matchup that we'll keep tabs on tonight as Olean travels to Rochester power Aquinas at 5:30.
Our scoreboard page has a full schedule of today's games -- that same page will have box scores as games are reported to us throughout the evening.