BOX SCORE

Allentown, PA (January 25, 2010) – For the fourth straight year the DeSales University men's basketball team owns the Lehigh Valley bragging rights as the Bulldogs finished off a sweep of the other two local Division III teams on Monday night with a 67-59 win over Muhlenberg College in Memorial Hall behind a career-high 32 points from senior Darnell Braswell (Allentown, PA/William Allen).

The Bulldogs, who earlier this season also knocked off local rival Moravian College, have now won seven straight games to improve to 14-4 overall, while Muhlenberg falls to 9-8 overall. DSU complimented Braswell's career-high with a terrific defensive effort forcing the Mules to just 33.9 percent shooting for the game and pressuring MC into 15 turnovers.

It was that defense that kept DeSales in the game early as the Bulldogs offense struggled, needing 5:44 to get on the board on a short jumper from Braswell at the 14:16 mark. DSU was down just one though as Muhlenberg also struggled early as the two teams combined to score just five points over the first seven minutes of the game.

DSU took its second lead of the game at the 5:15 mark of the first half when junior Brian Hunter (Allentown, PA/Emmaus) canned a three-pointer on a nice kick out pass from Braswell to put the Bulldogs up 22-20. Another three from Hunter made it a three-point game two and a half minutes later and with the scored tied at 33 with 3.3 seconds left, Braswell hit nothing but net on a long three-pointer at the top of the key to give the Bulldogs a three-point halftime advantage.

The second half saw DeSales continuing to lead by three at the 16:46 mark when another Hunter triple was followed by a lay-up from sophomore Jamey Bercier (Stroudsburg, PA/Notre Dame) starting an 8-2 run that was finished off by a three-pointer from senior Rob Schubach (Center Valley, PA/Southern Lehigh) giving DSU its largest lead to that point, 48-39.

The Mules chipped away, scoring nine of the next ten points to pull within one before Braswell keyed a 9-0 spurt with seven points to put the Bulldogs up 10 with 8:16 left. After a Muhlenberg bucket on the next possession, the Bulldog defense refused to let MC get any closer than six points the rest of the way as Braswell went 6-for-6 from the line over the final 50 seconds to ice the win.

Braswell broke his previous career-high of 27 points, which came in the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year at Ithaca College. He needed just 16 shots, making nine of them and was an impressive 11-of-12 from the charity stripe, while also grabbing a team-high seven rebounds and dishing out four assists.

Hunter also reached double figures with 10 points and dished out four assists, while Schubach and sophomore Bob Zanneo (Philadelphia, PA/Father Judge) each totaled five points to lead an 18-point scoring effort from the bench.

Spencer Liddic recorded a double-double with 14 points and 12 rebounds as the lone double digit scorer for Muhlenberg.

DSU gets the next four days off, returning to action on Saturday when they travel to Eastern University for the first game of the second half of the Freedom Conference schedule. Game time is set for 3:00 pm.