QUEBEC CITY – Dele Ogundokun of Hamilton, Ont., collected a "double-double" and Jenning Leung scored a game-high 17 points as No.7-ranked McGill erased a five-point halftime deficit and held on for an ugly 53-47 road win at Laval in men's basketball before 1,745 at Centre PEPS, Friday.
 
McGill improved to 16-4 in their last 20 confrontations with the Rouge et Or. It was a sloppy affair that featured 36 personal fouls and 41 turnovers. When the dust settled, the Redmen found themselves back in a tie with Laval atop the RSEQ standings, both teams owning identical 4-2 records. With one game remaining between these rivals, McGill currently holds the tiebreaker advantage having a 2-1 head-to-head record with their Quebec City foes. The teams are dead-even in point-differential, so whoever wins the season finale in the provincial capital on Feb. 23, will have the upper-hand.
 
The Redmen led 11-10 after the opining quarter but went cold in the second stanza and found themselves down 23-18 at the break. McGill finally caught fire and looked like a whole new team in the second-half. They outscored Laval 19-13 in the third frame and 16-11 in the final quarter.
 
Leung, a fourth-year point guard from the Philippines, was only 6-for-20 from the floor but made them count with a stellar 5-for-10 performance from beyond the arc. He was also credited with two rebounds, a pair of steals and two assists.
 
Ogundokun, a 6-foot-2, 222-pound senior, collected 11 points and pulled down a game-high 14 rebounds in 37 minutes of playing time. He added four assists, two steals and one blocked shot. Teammate Francois Bourque, a 6-foot-6 native of Terrebonne, Que., also stuffed the stat sheet with 14 points, eight rebounds and four assists.
 
Not a single Rouge et Or player was able to reach double figures in scoring. Nicolas Begin and Alexandre Leclerc led the way with only nine and eight points, respectively.
 
Both teams shot the ball poorly with McGill going 26.3 per cent from the floor (20/76), connecting on only seven of 32 attempts from downtown while Laval shot 30.4 per cent (17/56) and went 7-for-17 from the arc. They both went an identical 6-for-13 from the charity stripe
 
The Redmen, who improved to 12-7 overall and 4-2 in league play, will now have the weekend off before switching their focus to south of the border. They will travel to Cambridge, MA., to battle Ivy League powerhouse Harvard on Jan. 10. McGill is 2-3 versus NCAA teams this season, all of them preseason games played last August. The Redmen lost to Stetson (65-80), Wichita State (71-77) and Arkansas Pine Bluff (43-71) before defeating Florida A&M (69-62) and Farleigh Dickinson (76-69)

McGill's next regular season game is Jan. 13 against cross-town rival UQAM at their Centre Sportif at 8 p.m.