Center Valley, PA (December 6, 2014) – Junior Cody Deal hit a three-pointer at the top of the key with 11.4 seconds left and a Cougar three at the buzzer to win was short as the DeSales University men's basketball team defeated Misericordia University, 60-59, on Saturday afternoon in Billera Hall in a thrilling rematch of last year's Freedom Conference title game.

DSU (6-2, 1-1 Freedom) trailed by four after a three from Griffin Sponaugle with 36 seconds left but after two free throws from sophomore Kuity Slanger with 28 seconds left, the Bulldogs fouled Erik Kern and just 23.2 seconds left in the game.

Kern missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and Deal grabbed the board.  DSU worked the ball around on the offensive end and Slanger found Deal wide open at the top of the key as he hit nothing but nylon with 11.4 left.  MU (7-2, 1-1 Freedom) immediately inbounded the ball and Joe Busacca raced down court, losing control of his dribble briefly as the clock winded down but he gathered himself and found a wide open Jesse Urich on the left wing but his three as the buzzer sounded was short off the front rim with DeSales earning a hard-fought one-point win.

Deal finished with 12 points, six rebounds, and five assists, while freshman Aaron Burton added a team-high 14 points and seven rebounds to lead DeSales.  Sophomore Brian Laird added 10 points off the bench, sophomore Ryan Callahan had eight points and six boards, and Slanger contributed six points and four assists in the win.

MU's Steve Ware had an outstanding afternoon scoring 23 points on 11-of-17 shooting as the lone double digit scorer for the Cougars.

The first-half was a defensive battle as neither team shot well and both teams seemed to have a good idea what the other was going to do.  MU broke a tie at 13 with a 7-2 run to lead 20-15 before freshman Connor Jones hit a deep three at the halftime buzzer to make it a 20-18 game at the break in favor of the Cougars.  MU shot 30.8 percent while the Bulldogs converted just 33.3 percent from the field.

Both teams found their offensive games in the second-half as DSU more than doubled its first-half out-put with 42 points.

It was back and forth to start the second-half as the two teams traded baskets and with MU leading 35-33, the Cougars used an 8-0 run to take a 43-33 lead with 11:47 left to play.

The lead was as high as 11 points twice including 48-37 with 10:08 remaining when the Bulldogs made a charge using a 14-6 run over the next five minutes to pull within three (54-51) with 5:10 on the clock.

Both teams went cold from there as neither team scored over the next 2:32 before a jumper from Busacca increased the lead to five for Misericordia.  A jumper from Burton and two free throws from Laird cut it down to a one-point game when Sponaugle hit the three on a broken play with 36 seconds left setting up the final moments of the game.

After hitting just 33.3 percent of its shots in the opening half DeSales converted 55.6 percent in the second-half, similar to Misericordia who after canning just 30.8 percent in the opening half hit 65.2 percent in the second-half.

Both teams took terrific care of the ball as the Cougars had just five turnovers and DSU, who committed 23 miscues in its loss on Wednesday, had just eight turnovers as compared to 18 assists in the win.  The Bulldogs shot 50.0 percent (7-for-14) from outside the arc in the win and took advantage of 11 offensive rebounds (led by three from sophomore Aaron Borroughs) to score 15 second-chance points.

The Bulldogs won't return to action until Wednesday when they travel to PSU-Berks for a non-conference game beginning at 7:00 pm.