Claremont, Calif. - Junior guard Michael Cohen had a career high 28 points as the Pomona-Pitzer Men's Basketball team won its ninth game in a row by defeating Redlands 83-77 on Wednesday evening.

With the win, Pomona-Pitzer improves to 14-5 overall and 9-1 in the SCIAC, remaining one game behind in the loss column to first place Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (8-0), which edged Chapman this evening 66-65. The Sagehens have not lost in exactly one month, since falling on Dec. 29 to Schreiner at the Trinity (Texas) Tournament.

Pomona-Pitzer led through almost the entire second half after trailing 44-42 at the break, building a lead up to nine points on three occasions. Cohen started the second half by feeding junior guard Kyle McAndrews for a layup seven seconds in to tie the score at 44-44, then grabbed a defensive rebound and hit a jumper to put the Sagehens ahead to stay at 46-44 with 19:12 remaining.

The score stayed within four points for the first nine minutes of the second half, before a Cohen three-pointer capped off a 7-0 run to give the Sagehens a 66-57 lead with 9:57 remaining. After a Redlands basket, Cohen assisted on a basket from senior forward John Weiss to make the score 68-59.

Redlands then scored the next five points to pull within 68-64, before Cohen hit the first of two key three-pointers to stop Bulldog momentum. The second one came with 3:05 left and the shot clock winding down, doubling a 75-72 lead into a 78-72 advantage. He then followed that basket with another jump shot late in the shot clock to push the lead to 80-72 and a foul shot with 1:30 left helped Pomona-Pitzer match its biggest lead at nine points.

The Sagehens had to withstand one final push from Redlands as Aljosa Bjekovic hit a three-pointer with 1:24 to go to make the score 81-75. After Pomona-Pitzer opened the door a crack with a pair of missed foul shots, the Bulldogs then had seven chances to cut the lead even further, four on one possession and three on the next, but went 0-7 until Weiss grabbed a defensive board to essentially seal the win.

McAndrews finished with 16 points despite an off day shooting from the floor (2-12) as he made 11 of his 12 foul shots. Weiss finished with 14 points on 5-6 shooting, and senior guard Xavyr Moss had 12 points on 4-5 shooting. Redlands was led by Eric Radford with 21 points.

Pomona-Pitzer will try to stretch its winning streak to 10 games with another tough road test on Saturday at Cal Lutheran, beginning at 5 p.m.