AMHERST, N.Y. - In a matchup featuring two of the top men's basketball teams in the East Coast Conference, Daemen College emerged victorious today, defeating visiting University of Bridgeport 78-69 before another packed house at Lumsden Gymnasium.  The 289 spectators on hand warmed up for tonight's Super Bowl with some high quality NCAA Division II hoops in a game with huge implications for the ECC standings.

With the victory, Daemen's ninth-straight, the Wildcats (14-6, 10-3 ECC) assume sole possession of second place in the league which they had shared with UB entering today.  The Purple Knights, playing their fourth game in the last seven days, couldn't get the week-long sweep and fell to 12-9 overall and 9-4 in league play.

Redshirt-freshman guard/forward Deion Hamilton (Rochester, N.Y./Greece Athena) led the way for the Wildcats, hitting 7-of-12 field goal attempts and totaling a career-high 19 points to go with seven rebounds, two blocks and a steal.  Hamilton, whose insertion into the starting lineup nine games ago coincides with Daemen's recent winning streak, has now put up double-figure scoring in four of the last seven games, averaging 10.7 points per game in that span.  Hamilton becomes just the second Daemen player other than stars Torrence Dyck (Rochester, N.Y./San Jacinto College) and Arif Mehmetaj (Jamaica, N.Y./SUNY Delhi) to lead the team in scoring this season, and the first since Nick Petrucelli (Hicksville, N.Y./Thomasville Prep) scored 20 points in a non-league win over Felician College back on January 3.

Dyck, the league's leading scorer coming in at 23.8 points per game, was held to just 16 today, but he contributed in other ways, namely producing nine boards and a game-high six assists.  Mehmetaj, who went off for a career-high 30 points in Friday's 106-102 victory here against Dowling College, scored 11 of his 13 points today in the opening frame.

The Wildcats also got a solid effort from freshman point guard Jay Sarkis (Rochester, N.Y./Greece Athena) as he canned 9-of-11 free throws, including 7-of-9 in the pivotal second half, en route to 13 points, while adding six rebounds, two assists and a steal.

Devon Elliott led UB with 18 points, but needed 22 shot attempts to do so, connecting on seven.  He added six rebounds, three steals and two blocks to the Purple Knights cause.  Muhammed Ahmed narrowly missed a double-double (12 points, nine rebounds) and Ernest Rouse hit double figures with 10 points.

A back-and-forth affair throughout, the teams traded the lead 14 times in this one, including 12 in the first half alone when neither team created more than five points of separation.

In the second, Sarkis' layup at the 13:57 mark gave the Wildcats a slim one-point lead (46-45), an advantage which they would not relinquish down the stretch.

Later, the hosts embarked on a 7-0 run, turning a 57-56 lead into an eight-point gap (64-56) at the 4:31 mark, the largest lead for either team up until that point.  Hamilton scored a layup and converted a pair of free throws in the spurt which was capped when Dyck split a pair of freebies.

From there, UB closed to a five-point deficit on three ocassions, but timely free throw shooting from the Wildcats disallowed the guests to get any closer.  Daemen converted 12-of-14 from the charity stripe in the final 2:30, including 10-of-12 combined from their three freshmen starters - Sarkis, Hamilton and Darius Garvin (Elmira, N.Y./Notre Dame).

Daemen, which came into the game leading the ECC in scoring at 87.3 points per game and having scored 100 or more in three-straight games, won for just the second time all season when scoring less than 80 points.  Two days removed from making 15 three-point shots in the win over Dowling, the Wildcats were downright chilly from long distance today, hitting just 3-of-19.  But, it was the Daemen defense that stepped up, limiting UB, the ECC's second-highest scoring team coming in, to just 33-percent shooting in the game (25-for-75).

The win avenged a December 20 loss at Bridgeport (94-85), and it sets up another huge ECC game in the coming days.  Daemen will travel to league-leading Saint Thomas Aquinas College (18-4, 12-2 ECC) this Thursday, February 11 in a game that will feature the two hottest teams in both the league and the East Region (Daemen with a nine-game winning streak, STAC with a Region-best 12-game winning streak).