In their final game of the season, the Case Western Reserve University men’s basketball team triumphed over Carnegie Mellon University, finishing this away game in Pittsburgh with a final score of 110-104. With this win, the Spartans finish their 2024-25 campaign with a 9-16 overall record and a 5-9 record in UAA play, finishing with a fifth-place tie in the league standings.
“It was one of the craziest, highest-scoring games I’ve played in,” said third-year guard Anand Dharmarajan, who finished the game with a personal-best 27 points, shooting 9-of-15 overall and notching 7-of-10 from beyond the arc. “I thought we played great on offense, which had been a struggle at some points in the season, and a lot of guys stepped up and played really well to help us win.”
Undeniably the biggest star of the show was fourth-year guard Sam Trunley. In this final game of his collegiate career, he scored 51 points to set new single-game and single-season records for CWRU along with the most points ever scored by a player in a UAA game, breaking the record of 49 points set in 2012 by the University of Chicago’s Matt Johnson. Trunley made 15 of his 21 shot attempts in the game, including 7 successful 3-pointers out of 11 attempts—one shy of his school record.
“Trunley was unbelievable … [he] made a lot of tough shots down the stretch to lead us to the win,” Dharmarajan said. “I was really happy to win for our seniors Sam and [fourth-year forward] Umar Rashid; They’re both awesome teammates and really good basketball players and they deserved to end their college career on a win.”
With the tipoff of the game, CWRU came in with a bang as Dharmarajan scored a 3-pointer within the first 20 seconds of the first half. This was followed with layups from Dharmarajan, Trunley and graduate guard Christian McDaniel. The Spartans held the lead for several minutes before the Tartans went on to take the lead with 16:07 left in the first quarter. This lead was short-lived, however, as within seconds fourth-year forward Andrew Fox scored a hook shot to put the Spartans back on top, 11-10. While CMU was able to close the gap to as narrow as 2 points at multiple times, they were never able to reclaim the lead during the period. By the end of the first half, the score was at 60-52, with 24 points courtesy of Trunley and 19 coming from Dharmarajan.
The Spartans kept the momentum going into the second half, as less than a minute into the period McDaniel scored a layup, putting CWRU at a 10-point lead over CMU. For the remainder of the game, the score remained neck and neck, as the Tartans and Spartans kept going back and forth for possession and shots; CMU managed to bring the score to a 96-96 tie with 5:22 left in the game. Trunley ended the tie less than 20 seconds later, giving CWRU a lead that remained for the remainder of the game.
CWRU finished the game with a shooting record of 50.7% (36-71) overall and 45.5% (15-33) from long range. The 110 points scored by the Spartans mark a season high, as well as the most points they scored in a single game since scoring 111 against John Carroll in 2021. The Spartans held the lead for all but 96 seconds of the entire game, including a mere 36 seconds during which they were trailing the Tartans.
With this game marking the conclusion of the 2024-25 season for the Spartans, Dharmarajan noted several goals he has for the team come next season.
“[The] goals for next season are to get this program back to where we’ve been in the last couple years. We want to win the UAA and get back in the NCAA tournament,” he said.