On a day when two teams couldn’t have been more evenly matched, Delaware hinted at a late pull away.

Not surprisingly, the Blue Hens still had to sweat it out.

Their 84-80 basketball win over Monmouth in a Coastal Athletic Association game at the Carpenter Center came down to the final seconds in front of a Saturday matinee gathering of 3,037.

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A flagrant foul on Monmouth came in handy for the Hens, who improved to 14-9 overall and 6-4 in the CAA.

“That’s the price you pay to win,” Delaware’s Jyare Davis said of the stressful final stretch. “It’s gonna be hard to win. Winning a league game is definitely tough. It’s gonna be a full 40-minute game and today we came out on top.”

The Sanford School grad led Delaware with 19 points and 12 rebounds. The double-double was the fourth this year and ninth in his career for Davis.

Cavan Reilly and Christian Ray scored 13 each, with Ray surpassing 1,000 career points on a second-half fast-break dunk. Jalun Trent had 11 points.

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Delaware shot 50.9 percent from the field (28-for-55) and made 10 of 21 beyond the arc.

“We found a way,” Delaware coach Martin Ingelsby said. “Survive and advance. We did enough offensively to beat a really good team. We scrapped and they made some tough shots down the stretch but we needed a 2-0 weekend.”

It was the first in conference play this season for Delaware, which trounced William & Mary 81-53 in Williamsburg Thursday. A tough task looms in the Hens’ next game Thursday at Towson before they host William & Mary next Saturday.

Second-year CAA member Monmouth (12-11, 5-5) is now 5-0 at home and 0-5 on the road in league games. The Hawks got 24 points from Xander Rice, son of 13^th-year coach King Rice and the CAA’s leading scorer with 21.6 ppg coming in.

Neither team had led by more than six points when Monmouth tied it 62-62 with 9:29 to go. A 3-pointer by Gerald Drumgoole then ignited a 14-5 Delaware run that gave it a 9-point lead.

But Monmouth kept coming, and pulled within three twice by making a pair of free throws and then 81-80 with 2.8 seconds left on two more foul shots.

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The Hawks, however, committed a flagrant by fouling before Delaware’s subsequent in-bounds pass. Drumgoole and Davis then made decisive free throws. Before that, the referees’ video review had changed what was first ruled a Delaware turnover.

“You knew you were gonna have to probably whether another run by them,” Ingelsby said, “because Rice is a talented kid. I thought he made some tough shots …

“Great learning experience for our guys. I like the fact that we put up 81 and 84 the last two games, and I think we could’ve been a little better too, from the foul line [10 misses Saturday] and some of those turnovers [12]. I thought we left some opportunities on the table.”

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.