CASTLETON, Vt. – The Castleton University men's basketball team wrapped up the regular season on Saturday at Glenbrook Gym, losing the finale by a score of 88-74 to NCAA No. 13 UMass Dartmouth in Little East Conference action.
 
The Spartans wrap the regular season 5-20 overall and 0-16 in league play. Castleton travels to Southern Maine on Monday for the LEC Tournament play-in game as the No. 9 seed. UMass D secures the league's No. 1 seed with a 22-3 overall mark and 14-2 record in league play. The Corsairs play the winner of USM and Castleton on Tuesday.
 
The Spartans shot 38.3 percent as a team, hitting on 23-of-60 from the floor and made 35.7 from three (10-of-28). The Corsairs shot an impressive 48.4 percent (30-of-62) from the field and 48.0 percent (12-of-25) from three. Castleton made 18-of-19 at the free-throw line (94.7 percent), their highest percentage when shooting double-digit free throws since hitting 10-of-10 in 2014. The Corsairs made 16-of-21 at the stripe. UMassD had a hefty advantage on the glass, outrebounding Castleton 46-25 with a 15-7 edge in offensive boards. The second-chance scoring was 20-10 in favor of the Corsairs.
 
Darrell Hardge scored a career-high 20 points in the contest, making 8-of-13 from the floor and 4-of-7 from three with five assists and three steals. Oluwadare Sowunmi added 10 points and three rebounds for Castleton, with Johnny Torrence scoring nine points and Eric Shaw having eight. Sowunmi and Shaw were honored as Castleton's two graduating seniors prior to the contest.
 
Jake Ashworth scored 19 points to lead UMassD, while Adam Seablom, Jackson Zancan and Mike Euquhart had 12 apiece. Jarron Santos and Isaac Percy rounded out UMass Dartmouth's six double-digit scorers with 10 points each. Eurquhart also had nine rebounds, and Zancan had eight.
 
The two sides went back-and-forth for the first 10 minutes of the game, swapping the lead numerous times to a 27-26 Spartan lead at the midway mark of the opening half. The Corsairs strung together a 10-4 run to take a 36-31 lead with 6:10 left in the half. Castleton got the deficit back to just one point late in the half when Jordan Hunt buried a three from the corner to make it 42-41 Corsairs, but two threes from UMassD outclassed a pair of twos from Castleton down the stretch to send the visitors to the locker room with a 48-45 lead.
 
Hardge erased the deficit early in the second half with a three to make it 48-48, but the Corsairs slowly pulled away, outscoring the Spartans 17-7 over the next five minutes to take a 65-55 lead. Hardge snapped the streak with a jumper, but UMassD tacked on four more points with back-to-back Eurquhart layups. A three from Torrence and a layup by Sowunmi made it just a seven-point game, but UMass Dartmouth extended the lead to 16 with a 9-0 run just minutes later. Castleton outscored the Corsairs 10-6 over a four-minute stretch that featured two threes from Shaw, but it was too little, too late as the Spartans trailed by 12 with less than a minute to play. The Corsairs tacked on two final free throws to seal the score at 88-74.
 
Castleton is on the road Monday night at 5:30 p.m. at Southern Maine for the LEC Tournament play-in game.