MORAGA, Calif. – Santa Clara men's basketball suffered just their third loss in conference play, falling to Saint Mary's 86-67 on Saturday evening as the Gaels extended their home winning streak to 25-straight. The Broncos drop to 14-3 in WCC play and are in third place in the standings with just one game remaining in the regular season.

Allen Graves turned in 20 points for his second-highest scoring total of the year while Christian Hammond chipped in 11 points.

HOW IT HAPPENED:

• Saint Mary's (26-4, 15-2) opened the game on an 11-2 run with Joshua Dent knocking down a couple of 3-pointers and forcing the Broncos (23-7) to call an early timeout ahead of the 16-minute mark. SCU responded with an 8-0 run of their own to make it 11-10 Gaels just two minutes later. The Broncos then took their first lead of the game at 15-14 following a couple free throws from Bukky Oboye with 12:54 remaining in the half.
• Theirry Darlan gave the Broncos a six-point advantage with just under six minutes remaining in the first half, knocking down a corner triple in front of the Gaels' bench to make it 31-25. Saint Mary's punched back in a big way, however, using a 13-2 run over the final 4:20 of the half to take a 42-36 lead into the locker room.
• Santa Clara was held to a 41 percent scoring clip led by an 11-point effort from Allen Graves in the opening 20 minutes while Saint Mary's converted on 48 percent and grabbed 11 offensive boards leading to 15 second-chance points. The Broncos trailed at the half for just the fifth time on the year.
• Saint Mary's extended the run even further with a 6-0 start to the second half to take an early 48-36 advantage and stretched the lead to 16 at 63-47 at the 12:32 mark before a 3-pointer from Christian Hammond at the top of the key sparked a 7-0 Bronco run to finally cut the deficit to single digits at 63-54.
• The Gaels responded with four unanswered points to make it 13-point affair again, but a trey from Jake Ensminger for his first points of the night brought it back to 10 at 67-57 with 8:06 remaining. Saint Mary's once again responded with a trey of their own, yet again, and another 3-ball from Mikey Lewis followed by a steal and a slam from Harry Wessels pushed the lead right back up to 16 with five minutes remaining at 75-59.
• Saint Mary's continued to pad the lead and led by as much as 23 at 84-61 in the final two minutes.
• The Gaels were 6-of-11 from 3-point range in the second half and shot 50 percent from the floor as opposed to a 40 percent clip for the Broncos.
• Santa Clara shot 40.7 percent for the evening (24-of-59) and was 8-of-24 from 3-point range (33.3 percent). Saint Mary's shot 49.2 percent on their end and were 11-of-26 from beyond the arc. The Gaels pulled down 51 rebounds to 21 for the Broncos.

NOTABLE NUMBERS:

• Graves logged his 21^st game in double-figure scoring, doing so for the 13^th time over the last four games, including the San Francisco game in which he played in just four minutes due to injury. The Ponchatoula, La., product also pulled down a team-high six rebounds and had a pair of steals.
• Hammond reached double figures for a team-best 25^th time.  
• The Broncos moved into second place for steals in a single season (281) jumping the 2010-11 squad's total of 275.

UP NEXT:
The Broncos will close out the regular season Saturday, Feb. 28, at home against Oregon State. SCU will honor their four seniors – Brenton Knapper, Elijah Mahi, Malachi Douyon and Brendan Yarusso – in a pregame ceremony. Tip-off is set for 5:00 p.m. PT and will be aired live on CBS Sports Network.