Hofstra's winning streak, the longest in the nation, hits 16 in rout of Towson

Hofstra's Justin Wright-Foreman drives the lane against Towson's Solomon Uyaelunmo in the second half on Saturday in Towson, Md. Credit: Doug Kapustin
TOWSON, Md. — Hofstra extended its winning streak to 16 games with Saturday's runaway victory over Towson, and the Pride are not running away from their accomplishment.
It's the longest active winning streak in the nation, and Hofstra is proud of it. Coach Joe Mihalich said the Pride want to ride this wave as long as possible.
“It’s a big number, but the reason we keep having some success is we’re embracing it,” he said after Hofstra's 84-61 Colonial Athletic Association victory at SECU Arena. “We’re enjoying it, and we know this — it could have been over today. So we’re going to enjoy it and run this as far as we can [and] as long as we can. We know everybody’s out to get us. You’ve got to meet it head on.”
Justin Wright-Foreman had 25 points and Eli Pemberton added 22 for the Pride (19-3 overall, 9-0 CAA), which scored 18 of the game's first 22 points. Desure Bure finished with 14 points, seven assists, six rebounds and six steals, Tareq Coburn scored 11 points and Jacquil Taylor added 10 as the five starters accounted for 82 of the team's 84 points.
The Pride's last defeat was a 69-67 overtime loss at VCU on Nov. 24. Hofstra, which will play its third straight away game against Northeastern next Saturday, is two victories away from the second-longest winning streak in team history, an 18-game run in 2000-01.
“Every game we go into, we focus on getting the win,” Pemberton said. “That’s all we focus on. We love the streak, and we love each other as a team, and the streak is bringing us closer and closer every game.”
Said Wright-Foreman, “We play like we’re not even on the streak. We talk about it all the time, but we act like it’s Game 1. We’ve just got to play. We’ve just got to hoop every day.”
Wright-Foreman, who entered Saturday averaging 26.0 points per game, scored 10 of the Pride's first 18 points and said that opened things up on offense. “Everybody started to key on me, so it just let everybody else go wild,” he said. “Eli [is] just an incredible player, and everybody just started picking it up. You can’t just key on me anymore. It’s a whole team of killers.”
Hofstra got a scare early in the second half when Wright-Foreman injured his left shoulder on a drive to the basket and had to be checked out. He returned just over a minute later and stayed in.
Towson (7-15, 3-6) did not make its second basket of the game until just over eight minutes had been played. The Tigers cut their deficit to seven late in the first half, but Hofstra was up 43-31 at the break and never led by fewer than 10 points in the second half.
Brian Fobbs had 22 points for the Tigers, who had 15 turnovers that led to 20 Pride points.
“They ran away from us,” Towson coach Pat Skerry said. “They’re a hard team to stop. We tried it all.”
HOFSTRA’S STREAK BY NUMBERS
16
Straight wins
9
Straight wins vs. CAA opponents
10
Double-digit wins
17.5
Average margin of victory
107
Highest point total
53
Biggest margin of victory
2
Smallest margin of victory
88
Approximation in feet of Eli Pemberton’s near full-court shot in Thursday’s win at James Madison
25.3
Justin Wright-Foreman’s points per game average