The Lasell College men's basketball team dropped a 91-72 result to Albertus Magnus on Thursday night in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Tournament semifinal round. The win improves the Falcons to 25-2 on the year, while the Lasers fall to 16-11 on the year. Albertus will take on St. Joseph's College of Maine on Saturday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. in the final in New Haven, while the Lasers will wait to see if they receive an ECAC tournament bid.
Lasell was led by Brandon Ganesh (West Palm Beach, Fla.) with 17 points, while Clyde Niba (Atlanta, Ga.) added 14 points and 10 rebounds. Jeremy Daniel (Bridgeport, Conn.) finished with 13 points on 6-6 shooting from the field and Angel Ortiz (East Lyme, Conn.) came off the bench to net 11 points in the contest.
Darius Watson (New Britain, Conn.) led all scorers with 27 points as he shot 9-of-13 from the field to go along with nine rebounds. Victor Ljuljdjuraj (Yorktown Heights, N.Y.) finished with 10 points and 10 rebounds for his 16th double-double of the season. Eian Davis (Brooklyn, N.Y.) scored 19 points, while adding nine boards and seven assists and Lemar Larsen (Waterbury, Conn.) added 10 points on 2-for-4 shooting.
The Falcons shot 52% from the floor, including a 53.8% showing in the first half, while Lasell shot 40.6% on the night.
The Falcons opened the contest with a 7-2 run before the Lasers cut the lead to two at 9-7 with 13:16 left in the first half. Albertus put together a 10-0 run in a span of 5:20 to make the score 19-7 to take a 12-point lead with 7:56 left in the frame. During the run, Watson and James Jennings (Bridgeport, Conn.) hit back-to-back three pointers to add to the Falcons' lead.
The Falcons' largest lead of the first half came with 3:53 left in the frame as Larsen connected on a layup to give Albertus a 17-point advantage. The Lasers would cut the lead to 33-19 at the half on a layup by Brock Walters (Jacksonville, Fla.) but would get no closer than 12 in the scond half. After shooting just 1-of-1 from the free-throw line in the first half, the Falcons shot 32-of-41 from the charity stripe in the second frame to secure the victory.