With the win, Hopkins will advance to face McDaniel, who won the first game of the evening at Goldfarb over Frostburg State, 72-69. Game time is set for Saturday at 8 p.m. on the campus of Villa Julie College.
In the first half, Hopkins opened up a 25-9 advantage by the 6:31 mark, their largest lead of the period. Salisbury was able to narrow the gap to 29-17, but Valerio added a three-pointer with 1:48 remaining to raise the lead back to 15, at 32-17. The Sea Gulls got a free throw and a bucket by junior guard Ray Williams with 51 seconds remaining to make the halftime score 32-20.
Salisbury managed to keep the score within 15 points through the first nine minutes of the second half, but Hopkins began to stretch the advantage, using a 13-3 run punctuated by two three-point goals by sophomore guard Doug Polster to extend the lead to 55-33 with 9:18 remaining, the largest Hopkins advantage of the night.
The Sea Gulls used a 13-5 run aided by a pair of three-pointers by senior guard Justin Rice to narrow the gap to 13, but the Blue Jay lead was too much for Salisbury to overcome.
Valerio notched a career-high with his 29-point night. Previously, Valerio topped out with two 19-point efforts. He shot 8-of-13 from the field, and 6-of-9 from behind the three-point line. Of his 29, 16 points came in the second half.
Junior forward Danny Nawrocki was the only other Blue Jay in double-figures, scoring 13. Nawrocki was 7-of-10 from the free-throw stripe.
Polster contributed nine points in 18 minutes, shooting 3-of-5 from outside.
Leading Salisbury was Williams, who turned in an 18-point night, going 6-of-12 from the floor and 5-of-6 from the foul line.