CULLOWHEE, N.C. – Ben Johnson led the Bellarmine men's basketball team with 22 points and seven rebounds Wednesday night against Western Carolina, but the Knights fell at the Ramsey Center 86-74.
 
Johnson hit on 5-of-11 three-point attempts, his second best three-point effort of the season following his 6-of-11 performance at Louisville, and also added a pair of steals.
 
Dylan Branson added a season-high 18 points on 5-for-10 shooting, grabbed six boards and handed out a team-high four assists, though it was not enough to boost Bellarmine (2-7) to their first road win of the season.
 
Knights leading scorer Jack Karasinski (16.9 PPG) was in a walking boot Wednesday night, missing his second game of the season.
 
It was a back-and-forth tilt to start. Bellarmine jumped out to an early 7-4 lead after the first segment after five early points by Branson. Western Carolina, however, would use an 8-0 run to go up 12-9.
 
The Catamounts started the game 4-for-9 from deep and worked their way out to a 19-13 advantage, their largest lead of the first half, before Curt Hopf would hit Bellarmine's first three.
 
Later, Bellarmine would go from down four to up five at 32-27 with 5:17 left after an 11-2 run that included a pair of Billy Smith layups.
 
From that point, three-pointers began falling in for both sides as the teams combined for six threes over the last 4:04 of the first period. The Knights would build up their largest lead of seven at 41-34 with 2:11 left before the half ended in a 43-43 tie.
 
The second half, however, would not be as evenly played as the first. WCU opened the second stanza on a 24-5 run to reach their largest lead of 19 points at 67-48 with 10:42 remaining. The run included points from seven different Catamounts as the Knights came out of the break 2-of-10 from the field.
 
Smith hit the Knights' first three of the second half less than a minute in, but Bellarmine would not benefit from another trey until Landin Hacker finally sank one with 8:22 left in the game. The second half also saw a string of 44 consecutive made free throws, dating back to November 23 against Bowling Green, snapped.
 
The Knights cut the lead down to five at 74-69 with 3:15 left after a 10-0 spurt that was part of a larger 21-7 run. Still, the Catamounts would close the game on a 12-5 run, despite a pair of buckets by Johnson, to bring the game to its final score.
 
Bellarmine shot 46.4 percent from the field and a season-best 41.4 percent from three, but was outrebounded 41-26, including 13-4 on the offensive end leading to a 17-3 WCU advantage in second chance points.
 
Smith finished the game with 11 points, his sixth straight game in double figures.
 
The win for Western Carolina (3-4) was their first against a Division I opponent this season. Cord Stansberry led the Catamounts with a game-high 24 points while Ice Emery added 17. WCU shot 48.4 percent from the field and 40.6 percent from three, both season bests against a Division I opponent.
 
The game was the Knights' second competition in the ASUN/SoCon Challenge. They dropped their earlier contest in the event to VMI inside Knights Hall on November 9. The Southern Conference leads the event 10-4 following play on Wednesday.
 
Bellarmine is back home on Saturday to take on Brescia at 3 p.m. ET.
 
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