Sunday Game Coverage

First, from the Albright College Website:

Men’s Basketball Defeats Blue Jays in Overtime

Saturday, January 31, 2009

ELIZABETHTOWN, PA - Down by two with less than a minute to play in the second half the Lions, who led throughout most of the contest managed to score the last second lay-up to tie the score, forcing their first overtime game of the year, Friday afternoon at Thompson Gymnasium.

In the overtime period senior center Phil Hall (Northampton, PA/Northampton) guided his team to 69-65 win, earning Albright their second straight conference victory in a row. Hall who led the Lions throughout the overtime period closed out the contest with the games only double-double (14 points, 11 rebounds).

With the victory Albright improves to 13-7 on the year and has a conference record of 4-3. The host Blue Jays fell to 10-9 overall and are also 4-3 in the conference. Men’s Basketball is now tied for second place in the conference alongside Elizabethtown. Widener University who did not play on Saturday remains in first place with a conference record of 4-2. The remaining four teams are all tied for fourth place with records of 3-4.

Also helping the Lions throughout the afternoon was freshman Derek Hall (Northampton, PA/Northampton) who pulled down a career best 13 rebounds in the contest. Hall finished just one point short of earning his first double-double as the six-foot-10 inch center ended the day with nine points. Senior Matt Bazsika (New Zealand/South Plainfield (NJ)) and sophomore Zac Shaeffer (Lancaster, PA/Lempeter-Strasburg) combined for 22 points respectively in Saturday’s victory.

For the host Blue Jays Joe Flanagan and Mike Church each scored a game high 13 points. Church who actually tied the score up at 61-61 in the final two minutes of play was the driving force behind the Elizabethtown comeback which spanned nearly the entire second half.

Going into the final 20 minutes of play, Albright held just a five point lead over the host Blue Jays. However with some explosive shooting from Shaeffer as well as Bazsika the Lions increased their lead to 10 points in the opening minutes.

The Lions would hold onto that commanding lead for only a minute as Elizabethtown continued to chip away at Albright’s hard fought lead throughout the half. Their determination combined with some impressive free throw shooting put the Blue Jays in a position to take the lead in the last five minutes of play. With 2:26 left in the contest Church’s dunk evened the score for the first time in the half.

Kyle McConnell who was outstanding off the bench for Elizabethtown scored the go ahead lay-up with 1:41 left to play. Albright looking for that key opportunity possessed the ball very well and did not waste their opportunity as time continued to wind down. On their final possession of the game, Shaeffer passed the ball to Bazsika who was sitting wide open under the basket. Bazsika scored the lay-up to tie the game with less than five seconds to play.

Elizabethtown tried to score the game winner on their next possession but were unable to convert forcing the five minute overtime. Going into the contest, the Blue Jays were 1-0 in the overtime period, while Albright had never gone past regulation in their first 19 games played this season.

Once in the overtime period, Albright led by Phil Hall dominated the host Blue Jays outscoring them six to two. That combined with Hall’s aggressive rebounding sealed the victory for the Lions.

Albright will now look to carry this new found momentum into their next conference match-up which is scheduled for Wednesday, February 4th at Lebanon Valley College. Start time for that crucial conference match-up is set for 8 p.m. Live stats and a web broadcast will be available.

To tune into the webcast fans can go to http://www.broadcastmonsters.com/Albright/albright020409.asx and to view the live stats feed fans can go to http://www.sidearmstats.com/lvc/wbball/.

Albright College 69, Elizabethtown College 65 OT

Box Score

From the Lancaster Sunday News:

E-town falls to Albright in overtime, 69-65

Sunday News
Published: Feb 01, 200900:02 EST
Elizabethtown
By Gordie Jones, Sunday News Correspondent

The final seconds of overtime were ticking down Saturday afternoon, and it was clear the game was not going to fall Elizabethtown's way. Blue Jays coach Bob Schlosser, already in rehash mode, turned toward his assistants.

"We had our chances," he said.

Where the Commonwealth Conference race is concerned, there will be others beyond this 69-65 loss to Albright. That seems assured, seeing as no one appears capable of gaining control of a league-wide tug-of-war.

The Jays (10-9, 4-3) fell out of a tie atop the conference with idle Widener (14-5, 4-2) — and into a second-place deadlock with the Lions (13-7, 4-3). Because of Saturday's other results — Lebanon Valley beat Lycoming, and Arcadia topped Messiah — all four of those teams are a game behind, with 3-4 conference records.

"Like I was saying to the team (Friday): 'If you win one, you're not in, and if you lose one, you're not out of it,'!\p" Albright coach Rick Ferry said, "because everybody's going to beat everybody."

The Lions coughed up an eight-point lead with 5:11 left in regulation, fell two behind on a layup by E-town reserve guard Kyle McConnell — a freshman from Cedar Crest — with 1:41 remaining, tied it on a basket by forward Matt Bazsika with 5.4 seconds to play and then scored the first five points of the extra period to take control. Simple.

"It was a typical Albright/E-town battle," Ferry said.

Actually, it's kind of typical of the league as a whole this year. Take the Jays, who from the season's outset have been taking one step forward, one step back. They won their first two games, lost their next two, won three in a row, lost three in a row, won one, lost one, won two, lost two and won two before Saturday's game. And they must now travel to Messiah and Widener.

In its first meeting with the Lions, on Jan. 14, E-town allowed Albright to shoot 60.4 percent from the field and score 93 points — both season highs by an opponent — en route to a 13-point loss.

The Jays' defense was much better Saturday, but they struggled to score against a team featuring a pair of 6-11 towers, senior Phil Hall and his brother Derek, a freshman. And it was clear the Lions had a very good read on E-town's trademark flex offense.

The Jays shot just 35.5 percent and managed nine assists on their 22 field goals, an unusually low total in a share-the-wealth attack. They also missed 14 of their 17 3-point attempts. Their top two scorers, guards Joe Flanagan and Keith Fogel, shot 3-for-12 and 3-for-13 from the field in finishing with 13 and six points, respectively. Each went 0-for-5 from the arc.

So E-town, largely limited to breakaways, stick-backs and one-on-one opportunities, fell behind, 8-7, with 15:05 left in the first half, and wouldn't lead again until McConnell's bucket in the closing minutes of regulation.

In between, there was the inevitable ebb and flow. Albright increased a five-point halftime lead to 10, at 40-30, early in the second half, only to see E-town creep within two, at 45-43, on a stick-back by McConnell, who was excellent with 10 points off the bench.

The Lions pushed it back out to seven, but here came the Jays again, closing to 54-53 on a 3-pointer by Mike Church (Solanco) with 6:35 to go.

Church collected 13 points and seven rebounds.

Albright answered with a 7-0 flurry, ending with a successful 1-and-1 conversion by Derek Hall (nine points, 13 boards) with 5:11 to play, making it 61-53.

But the Lions went scoreless on their next five trips, and the Jays rattled off 10 straight points. Church's baseline drive and dunk knotted the score at 61-all with 2:26 left. Then McConnell gathered in a loose ball in his own end and went the distance, also picking up a foul, to put his team ahead.

He missed his free throw, but E-town got another stop. Flanagan missed a wing jumper with 38 seconds left, and Jays guard Phil Schaffer poked the ball free from Albright's Adam Van Zelst just after Van Zelst crossed midcourt. The ball trickled into the backcourt, with Schaffer, Van Zelst and another Lion, Andre Murphy, in pursuit.

Murphy got there first, diving atop the ball and calling timeout with 18.5 seconds remaining.

Zac Shaeffer, a sophomore guard from Lampeter-Strasburg, slashed from the right wing to the foul line and found Bazsika all alone underneath for the tying basket.

Finally, from The Reading Eagle:

2/1/2009

Albright picks up OT win

From our news staff

Senior Matt Bazsika scored on a layup with five seconds left in regulation to tie it and sparked a five-point run early in overtime to lift Albright to a 69-65 win at Elizabethtown in a Commonwealth Conference game Saturday.

Bazsika, who finished with 10 points, gave the Lions (4-3, 13-7) the lead for good with a layup two minutes into overtime. Phil Hall followed with a free throw and Zac Shaeffer made a pair from the line for a 68-63 lead with 1:32 remaining.

The Lions pulled into a second-place tie with the Blue Jays (4-3, 10-9), a half-game behind idle Widener.

Hall scored 14 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, Shaeffer had 12 points before fouling out and Derek Hall, Phil's brother, had nine points and 13 rebounds. Central Catholic grad Matt Ashcroft came off the bench to score 10 for the Lions.

Tulpehocken grad Brady Haughney had two points, two rebounds and one assist off the bench for Elizabethtown.