GREENVILLE, Pa. - Chatham Men's Basketball (2-1, 1-0) secured an 86-74 road win over the Thiel Tomcats (2-2, 0-1) on Saturday at the Beeghly Gymnasium.

Diaun Pinkett paced the Cougars with 22 points on 8-16 shooting and tallied seven rebounds with six steals. Lovenson Xavier netted 18 points on 7-15 shooting with five boards. Blaine Gartley scored 14 points, including going 6-6 from the free-throw line, with five assists, three rebounds and three steals. Luca Robinson went 6-8 to score 13 points while Simon Boyer added 12.

The Cougars started the game with a 12-6 lead after the first 5:13 with five points from Boyer and three from Pinkett. The Tomcats cut it to 14-10 before the Cougars put together a 7-0 run made up of layups from Pinkett and Hunter Verling and a three from Xavier. Thiel brought the deficit back to single digits before an and-1 from Boyer followed by back-to-back threes from Xavier and Drew Vizenor grew the Chatham lead to 16. A 10-0 Cougar run later in the first half made it 44-22 with 2:24 left. Chatham went into the halftime break with a 20-point lead after a layup from Gartley in the closing seconds of the period.

The Tomcats opened the second half with a 13-6 run to cut the Cougar lead to 53-40. After five straight from Chatham, Thiel put together another swing of 12-2 to cut it to 60-52 with 10:20 left. However, the Cougars responded with a 9-1 run, built from five points from Robinson and four from Pinkett. Later in the half, Pinkett scored eight straight for the Cougars to take over the game and put things out of reach.

Chatham shot 48.4% (31-64) from the field and 31.6% (6-19) from three-point range. Thiel shot 44.6% (29-65) from the field, but just 11.1% (1-9) from deep. The Tomcats won the board battle 39-35, while the Cougars narrowly won the turnover battle 15-14. Chatham was 18-21 (85.7%) from the charity stripe.

This was head coach David Richards' 99th career win at Chatham. He will go for number 100 when the Cougars host Saint Vincent Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the AFC.