The day started out poorly for the Eagles as the visiting Cougars found and hit open shots to jump to a 21-12 advantage. First year forward Vinnie Baumunk paced Misericordia in the opening minutes with three baskets. Still, the Eagles hung tough. Bobby Black scored the first nine points of the game for the Eagles, but they continued to struggle against Misericordia's pressure. They had chipped the deficit to eight points before sophomore guard Matt Flanagan came off the bench to hit two consecutive threes to close the Misericordia lead to 27-25.
Baumunk answered Flanagan's second three, but Eastern's Matt Malloy countered with a trey of his own to keep the deficit at two. Five straight points from Baumunk and a pair of Corey Brown free throws made it 37-28 with four minutes remaining in the half. Neither team closed out the half well as Eastern put together just two field goals and the visitors could only split four free throws down the stretch.
Baumunk led all scorers with 15 points at the break. Eastern shot the ball poorly, moved the ball carelessly, and defended without their usual intensity, and still trailed by only seven at the half. The Eagle's deep rotation would prove to be valuable going into the second half as Eastern came out looking to be the fresher of the two teams.
Lenny DiMaria opened the scoring finishing a nice pass from Corey Copeland, but Baumunk answered right back with his seventeenth and final points of the contest. Chris McMonagle found a cutting Bryan Nadelhoffer for a twisting lay up, but the Cougars answered right back with an undrneath basket from Brown. The two teams traded hoops again before Manzo checked back into the game.
Bobby Black hit a three from the left side from DiMaria to make it 41-45. Manzo then scored inside and out on consecutive possessions to tie the game for the Eagles. With the game knotted at 45, Manzo kicked a ball out to Black who banged home a deep three to give the Eagles their first lead of the game with fourteen minutes remaining.
From there, the Eagles slowly built an advantage up to 55-50 before giving up a 6-0 run to fall behind again. Malloy found fellow reserve Ben Easley on a nice backdoor lob that the 6'2" guard caught and finished while being fouled. Easley's free throw put Eastern up 58-56, and after a Misericordia miss, DiMaria caught another Malloy pass for a midrange jumper to push lead up to 60-56. Two three pointers from Tony Rezykowski feuled an 11-7 run to take the game to the five minute mark.
At 67-67 with five minutes remaining, the game came down to conditioning, depth, and execution. The Eagles put on a 17-3 run over the next five minutes to take command of the game. DiMaria sparked the run with two baskets a single free throw and two nice assists. A Manzo three point basket lifted the lead to eight and appeared to be the decisively blow in the game.
Eastern's Black and Misericordia's Brown and Baumunk shared scoring honors for the game with seventeen each. Black's seventeen came on a very efficient ten shots. Manzo and DiMaria joined Black in double figures with 16 each. Ryan Roa and Rezykowski reached double figures for the visitors with 13 and 10 respectively. Chris McMonagle, who led all men on the boards with 11, also tallied five points and five assists while moving over onto Baumunk in the second half.
Eastern's reserves outscored Misericordia's 36-16, and that proved to be decisive in the closing minutes of the game. The Eagles used 62% shooting in the second half to bump their shooting up to 51% on the game and hit 14-16 from the foul line to salt the game away.
Coach Nadelhoffer said of the game, "At the half we felt like we were where we needed to be. We were not pleased with how we handled their pressure in the first half, and our execution was poor, but we felt as though we had better basketball left in us and that as long as we stayed in striking distance our depth would help us to win. Manzo stepped up big. Michael could probably have played, but I really did not want to risk having him get in trouble for next week, and Joe did everything we asked him to do and more. now we are on to Monday night."
The Eagles(14-5, 9-3) travel to conference leading Alvernia for the first of two games against the Crusaders.