Center Valley, PA (December 30, 2016) - The DeSales University men's basketball team shot 53.8 percent from the field en route to its fifth straight win, 80-72, over Alvernia University to take home the Al Senavitis Memorial Tournament Championship on Friday evening in Billera Hall.

Senior Kuity Slanger earns Tournament Most Valuable Player honors totaling 14 points in a team-high 31 minutes played, while fellow senior Ryan Callahan added 10 points and a team-high four assists to also earn All-Tournament Team honors. Senior Brian Laird added a team-high 15 points in the win, making two 3's pushing him just one shy of tying current assistant coach Darnell Braswell all-time career record of 3's made with 192.  Laird will enter next game with 191 career three-pointers. Freshman Kweku Dawson-Amoah added 13 points and senior Brandon Bridy had a terrific game with 10 points and a game-high eight rebounds in the win.

Alvernia (7-5) got 16 points each from Alex Shippen and George Marshall, 13 points from Marquis Marshall, 14 tallies from Mike Miller, and 11 off the bench Steve Pendleton in the loss.  Shippen and Marshall each earned All-Tournament Team honors.

Tied at eight early the Bulldogs (8-3) took control early using a 17-6 run to open up a 25-12 lead on the Crusaders.  DSU hit three 3's during the run and Dawson-Amoah had a team-high five points during the spurt.  AU closed to within six once but DeSales pushed the lead up to as many as 14 points before taking a 37-26 lead into the halftime locker room.

Alvernia came out hot in the second-half chipping away at the lead and trailed by just two points (50-48) with a chance to tie at the free throw line at the 12:11 mark but both freebies were off the mark and DSU scored four straight points to push the lead back up to six points.

After a Miller three at the 9:18 mark made it a five point game, DSU put the game away scoring nine of the next 11 points all in the paint to take a 68-56 lead and never really looked back from there.

The Bulldogs finished the game shooting 22-36 (61.1%) from inside the arc and had a 35-27 advantage on the glass.  DSU also did a nice job at the free throw line hitting 18-of-23 (78.3%) in the win.  Alvernia kept itself in the game for awhile hitting 11 3's and hit 56.7 percent in the second-half after converting just 32.4 percent in the first-half.

DeSales will now take a short break for the New Year's holiday and will begin MAC Freedom play on Wednesday, January 4th when they host Eastern University beginning at 8:00 pm.