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PIKE CREEK, Del. – Four Lightning players scored in double-figures and the team's bench pitched in with 25 points as the Goldey-Beacom College men's basketball team earned a hard-fought, 79-71 victory over Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference foe Felician College on Sat. afternoon at the Joseph West Jones Center.
With the win, GBC stayed atop the CACC South Division standings and improved to 16-9 overall and 11-4 in the conference. The Lightning also improved their school-record home winning streak to 10 games.
Meanwhile, with second-place Philadelphia U. losing to Post (69-44) today over at the Gallagher Center, the Lightning need to win just one of their two remaining games to clinch the school's first-ever CACC South Division regular season championship and earn a No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. The first of their two remaining games is against Phila U.
Felician fell to 12-12 overall with the loss and 8-8 in league play. The reigning CACC Tournament champions failed to gain any ground in the race with Concordia for the fourth spot in the CACC North after the Clippers fell at Chestnut Hill today.
In what was a rematch of last year's CACC final (won, 84-79 by Felician), the Falcons shot a blistering 59-percent from the field while GBC also shot a hot 49-percent. However, the Lightning shot better from long-range (6-of-16 to 3-of-10) and at the foul line (19-of-28 to 10-of-18) while also taking better care of the ball (11 assists/10 turnovers to FC's 14 assists/16 turnovers).
Senior point guard Azeez Ellegood led the Lightning in the scoring column with 17 on 5-of-10 from the field (3-of-7 3-pt. FG). Ellegood's senior backcourt mate Darnell Cephas also gave a commendable performance with 14 points (7-of-12 FG), three assists and two steals.
Terrence Parkes, the leading rebounder and third-leading scorer in the conference, contributed 16 points, seven rebounds and three steals. He is one point shy of tying Robert Black for second on the school's single-season points list with 468 and hitting the 900-point mark for his career.
Coming off the bench and giving GBC a giant lift were senior swingman Sam McDuffie and graduate student forward Rich Flemming. McDuffie's scored 14 to put him one past Derek Savage ('08) as he became the school's all-time leading scorer with 1,334 career points. He shot 4-of-8 from the field (6-of-9 FT), pulled down six rebounds and dished out three assists in 26 minutes of work. Flemming was a perfect 3-of-3 from the field as he showed off some range knocking down a pair of three-point field goals to finish with nine points and seven boards.
GBC never trailed once a 12-2 first-half Lightning surge turned an 11-10 deficit into a 22-13 advantage at the 11:01 mark. The Lightning lead was as many as 10 in the first half, 37-27 with 2:51 left when Felician closed on a 10-4 run to pull within 41-37 before the break.
Twice in the second half, the Falcons pulled within one, including when C.T. Williams' layup made it 50-49 with 13:18 left to play. But a 1-of-2 trip at the foul line by Parkes began a 10-0 run by the Lightning that put them ahead 60-49 at the 10:47 mark.
The Falcons shot a staggering 62-percent from the field (13-of-21) in the second half, but never got within seven after the Lightning's 10-0 push as a result of 11 second-half turnovers, 1-of-5 shooting from three-point range and just 7-of-11 shooting at the stripe.
Felician's Devon Young, the second-leading scorer in the CACC with an average of 19.4 points per-game, tallied 21 points, seven rebounds and three assists but left six points off the board with 2-of-8 shooting at the line and turned it over five times. Mike Edghill and Kashiff Foster scored 11 and 10, respectively for FC as well.
Up next for GBC is South Division nemesis Philadelphia University on Wed. night at 8 p.m. at the Jones Center. The Lightning, who have won 10 straight at home, can clinch a regular season South Division championship with a win. The last meeting with the Rams saw GBC suffer a lopsided 74-55 loss in its conference season opener on Dec. 1.
