John Paul Kromka scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds to pace five Mountain Cat double figure scorers and lead West third-seeded Pitt-Johnstown to an 85-78 victory over sixth-seeded Slippery Rock in Monday's opening round of the PSAC Men's Basketball Tournament in the Sports Center.
 
Pitt-Johnstown improved to 22-8 and advances to the PSAC Quarterfinals where they will travel to Erie to take on the PSAC West second-seeded Mercyhurst Lakers on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
 
Kromka finished with 19 points on 7-8 shooting and a team-high eight rebounds, Josh Wise added 17 points on 7-11 shooting.  Fred Mulbah scored 14 points and dished out a game-high nine assists, while Marcin Wiszomirski hit five of his six shots for 11 points, and Caiden Landis tallied 10 points and seven rebounds for the Mountain Cats.  Pitt-Johnstown also got nine points, including 6-of-6 from the free-throw line, from Drew Magestro.
 
Both teams got off to a slow start, but Wise's layup with 3:30 left in the first half put the Mountain Cats up by seven.
 
Pitt-Johnstown then got a dunk from Mulbah, and two late free-throws from Kromka to extend the lead to 39-26 at the half.
 
The Mountain Cats were able to extend the lead to 16 on Wise's 3-pointer to open the second half, but Slippery Rock answered with a 14-0 run, capped by Amante Britt's bucket at 16:47, to cut it to 42-40.
 
Kromka's basket in the paint at 13:09 rebuilt the lead to nine, before the Rock battled back to got back on top 64-63 on three of Donovan Walker's 22 second half points and a Deontae Robertson 3-pointer with 5:36 to play.
 
The lead see-sawed back-and forth for the next three minutes until Landis's free-throws at 2:12 gave the lead back to the Mountain Cats for good.
 
Pitt-Johnstown went on to make six consecutive free-throws down the stretch to seal the seven-point victory.
 
Despite going just 4-20 from behind the arc, Pitt-Johnstown got it done in just about every other statistical category.  The Mountain Cats, who outscored Slippery Rock by 20 in the paint and held a 37-27 advantage on the glass, shot 52.8% (28-53) from the field and an impressive 25-27 from the line.  The Rock was held to just 40.9% (27-66) shooting and 11-14 from the charity stripe.  Slippery Rock was also 13-29 from 3-point range.
 
Walker's game-high 27 points led the Rock.  Roberts finished with 22 points and Micah Till had 10 points.  Tholel Revelinio pulled down a game-high 10 rebounds for Slippery Rock, which ended its season at 15-14.