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Ryan Montgomery scored 16 points and Cody Jones added 14 to help the Lee men's basketball team improve to 3-0 on Wednesday evening with an 83-67 victory over Tusculum College from Walker Arena.

Montgomery dashed to the lane throughout the night and was 5 of 7 from the field and 6 of 8 from the charity stripe while Jones found his shot as he canned four triples in 23 minutes of action.

In what shaped up to be a game of runs by each team the Flames had an answer every time the Pioneers would threaten to take the lead. Tusculum came out of the intermission and cut a nine-point halftime margin all the way down to the three with 16:40 to play in the game before Cody Jones hit one his big 3s to change the momentum and keep the visitors at bay.

"I thought are defensive intensity was good throughout the game and we rebounded the ball well which allowed us to get out on some runs tonight," said head coach Bubba Smith. "To have young team but still be able to string together nice runs to extend our lead was really encouraging. It was good to see Cody gain some confidence again and hit some big shots and Ryan played a big second half for us, Chase Cullen gave us good minutes off the bench after Levi (Woods) got us going in the first half."

Lee would ice the game on a sequence of plays from sophomore-transfer Colton Blevins with just under four minutes to play. The big man rejected a shot, grabbed a pair of rebounds and scored four straight points to extend the lead to 16 points and force a timeout from the Pioneers. Blevins finished with 10 points, five boards and three assists.

Keaton Dotson, a sophomore transfer from Tusculum, reveled in the opportunity to play his old team as he added 14 points on 4 of 7 shooting from beyond the arc. Senior Levi Woods jump started the Flames scoring all eight of his points and grabbing eight of his nine rebounds in the first half.

The Flames hit 40 percent of their 3-pointers (8 of 20) and shot 54.7 percent from the field (29 of 53) in the contest. Tusculum was limited to just 34 percent shooting from the field (21 of 62) and 33 percent from 3-point distance (11 of 33).

Lee dominated the game inside outscoring Tusculum 36-12 in the paint and held a commanding 42-25 advantage on the glass.

The Pioneers were led in scoring by Peyton Woods who tallied a game-high 28 points and canned five treys and Donovan Donaldson who shot an efficient 6 of 9 from the field for his 18 points. The loss drops Tusculum to 0-3 on the season.

The two teams will get another crack at each other as Lee will travel up to Greenville on Tuesday for a 7 p.m. tip. The Flames will then head to Carson-Newman on Saturday (Nov. 25) before returning home to open up conference play with Auburn Montgomery on Thursday, Nov. 30.

"Obviously Tuesday's game will be able which team makes the better adjustments after just having seen each other but I think a bigger challenge for us will be how we handle the road environment. This will be our first test on the road as a young team so I'm excited to see how we will respond," concluded Smith.