Brunswick, Maine - In the first triple-overtime game in New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) Championship Tournament history, the Trinity College men's basketball team survived Bowdoin College, 71-67, on Saturday evening at Morrell Gymnasium. The No. 5-seeded Bantams improve to 15-10 and advance to the NESCAC semifinals for the first time since 2011, where they will face top-seeded Amherst next Saturday. The No. 4-seeded Polar Bears drop to 19-5. The Polar Bears will await word on a possible at-large bid when the NCAA Tournament field is announced on Monday, March 3.

Sophomore guard Jaquann Starks (Hartford, Conn.) sparked Trinity to the win, scoring a game-high 21 points and connecting on 4-8 from three-point range. His running lay-in with 48 seconds remaining in the third overtime gave the Bantams the lead for good. Junior co-c captain center George Papadeas (Athens, Greece) scored 15 points and grabbed 10 rebounds for Trinity while sophomore forward Shay Ajayi (Brooklyn, N.Y.) had 11 points and 11 boards in the win. Bowdoin was led by 19 points from John Swords, who battled foul trouble all day and finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds to go with three blocks. Bryan Hurley supplied 12 points off the bench while Lucas Hausman and Andrew Madlinger finished with 11 apiece.

The Bantam defense held Bowdoin to 19 first-half points and scored 25 for a six-point lead at the break. The visitors extended their lead to as many as 14 points in the second period, 39-25, following a Rick Naylor (Sudbury, Vt.) three-pointer with 14:04 to go. Bowdoin chipped away at the lead, using a 19-3 run over a 10-minute span to take their first lead since the opening minutes. The Polar Bears took the lead, 44-42, on a pair of Swords free throws, but Sparks answered with a three-pointer to regain the lead for Trinity and the teams traded buckets until the final moments when, trailing 52-50, Lucas Hausman's fast break lay-in tied the game for Bowdoin and sent the game into the first overtime.

The teams played the first overtime to a 6-6 draw as both teams missed potential game-winning shots and went into the second extra session tied at 58. In the second OT, Madlinger hit an immediate three-pointer for Bowdoin, only to see Trinity score the next six points on a layup by Papadeas, a jumper by junior forward Alex Conaway (New Haven, Conn.) and a pair of Ajayi free throws with seven seconds remaining. Hurley answered for the Polar Bears, however, connecting on a dbuzzer-beating three-pointer to send the game to a third overtime.

Madlinger gave the Polar Bears a brief 67-66 lead in the third OT, but Starks regained the lead for Trinity with a lay-in with 48 seconds remaining. After a defensive stop, Starks hit one free throw to make it 69-67 Trinity with 34 seconds on the clock. Swords saw a potential game-tying shot roll off the rim and Trinity extended the lead to 70-67 on a Papadeas free throw. Hurley made a bid for another dramatic game-tying three-pointer, but it rimmed out and Bantam junioer guard Hart Gliedman (New York, N.Y.) sealed the win at the charity stripe for the Bantams.

In a battle of the top two defensive teams in the NESCAC, the Bantams came away with the win despite shooting just 36% from the field, but took advantage of 18 offensive rebounds to notch 26 second-chance points. The Bantams also connected on 18-37 (48%) from the free-throw line. Bowdoin struggled mightily from long-range, hitting just 6-34 shots from past the line. The Polar Bears finished at 33% shooting for the game and attempted just 13 free throws.