ELON — Chris Czerapowicz finished with 20 points and Davidson beat host Elon 69-63 on a night where the Wildcats’ top two leading scorers dealt with to foul trouble and Elon’s stifling defense.

Early in the second half of Davidson’s road match against Elon, a group of Elon students standing on the front row asked each other what was the name of Davidson’s No. 35.

He was three shy of his career high of 23 points, and he was about to take the Wildcats to their 13th consecutive victory.

They will probably remember the next time their team plays Chris Czerapowicz.

The junior guard finished with 20 points and Davidson won the Southern Conference contest 69-63 on a night where the Wildcats’ top two leading scorers dealt with to foul trouble and Elon’s stifling defense.

“Coach always tells us to be aggressive and I guess today I had open looks and got going,” Czerapowicz said. “I took my shots and tried to be as aggressive as possible.”

(Brooks) and Jake (Cohen) and it allowed me to get some open looks. They dished it out to me and I got some guys to close out and take some dribbles and pull up.”

Down seven points with 34 seconds remaining, Elon (19-10, 12-5) cut the Davidson (22-7, 15-1) lead to 66-63 with 17.9 seconds remaining. But Tyler Kalinoski collected a Tom Droney missed free throw – Davidson’s ninth of the night – and sank his second free throw to put the game out of reach.

“It was very unusual for us but I’m not alarmed by it at all,” Davidson coach Bob McKillop said. “We’ve shot 81 percent all year long and you’re going to have those games when you don’t make foul shots.”

Lucas Troutman, the Phoenix’s leading scorer with 14.9 points per game, struggled while playing on a sprained right ankle. Troutman suffered the injury on Feb. 9 and had missed three of the previous four games.

Against Davidson, the 6-foot-10 junior had Cohen duty, holding the reigning SoCon Player of the Week to five points in the first half and 12 overall but did very little for the Phoenix on offense.

Buoying the Wildcats was Czerapowicz, whose 12 first-half points kept Davidson competitive against fired-up Elon.

“Chris is just getting better and better,” McKillop said. “I think his rebounding is pretty impressive too, and he played three different positions tonight. Chris is giving us great versatility.”

Davidson took a 55-54 lead with less than five minutes left, and while Elon kept it within one possession for most of the time, the Phoenix couldn’t overcome the deficit no matter how much the 1,832 in attendance – an Elon record – willed it.

“The fans are right on top of you,” McKillop said. “(Elon coach and former Davidson assistant) Matt Matheny has done a terrific job of getting people excited about Elon basketball because of who he is, what his team represents and who they play.

“We dodged a lot of bullets.”