WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senior guard/forward Torrence Dyck (Rochester, N.Y./San Jacinto College) scored 24 second-half points to lead a quintet of double-figure scorers as the Daemen College men's basketball team secured a 100-89 victory over host University of the District of Columbia in an important East Coast Conference matchup tonight at the UDC Sports Complex.

Dyck canned 10-of-15 field goal attempts, including 3-of-5 from three-point range, in the pivotal second half, finishing with a game-high 30 points while adding five assists and four rebounds.  Dyck's second-half effort led the Wildcats to 62 points in the period after taking a six-point lead (38-32) into the halftime intermission.

The win tonight moves Daemen to 12-6 overall and 8-3 in ECC play as they pull into a third-place tie in the league standings with Long Island University Post.  The Wildcats have now won seven-straight games, tied with Philadelphia University of the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference for the second-longest current winning streak in the East Region, behind the nine-game streak of the ECC's Saint Thomas Aquinas College.  Daemen is now 11-3 in its last 14 games, dating back to an 88-79 non-league win over Edinboro University on December 12 after starting the season with just one win in their first four outings.  Impressively, the Wildcats are now 5-1 in road conference games this season.

UDC, which defeated Daemen earlier this season at Lumsden Gymnasium (89-84 on December 13), falls to 8-10 overall and 6-4 in the league with tonight's loss.  After staring 4-0 in league play, the Firebirds are just 2-4 since the turn of the New Year.

Daemen got solid outings tonight from its trifecta of freshmen starters, each of whom set career-highs for points.  Jay Sarkis (Rochester, N.Y./Greece Athena) shot 7-of-11 from the field and totaled 19 points to go with five assists.  Deion Hamilton (Rochester, N.Y./Greece Athena), who has yet to feel defeat as a starter, made his seventh-straight start and notched 16 points while grabbing nine boards.  Darius Garvin (Elmira, N.Y./Notre Dame) started for the second-straight game and hit 5-of-7 shots from the floor, posting 12 points and six rebounds.

Perhaps the best all-around performance went to Daemen's Arif Mehmetaj (Jamaica, N.Y./SUNY Delhi).  The 6-foot-7 redshirt-junior forward flirted with a triple-double, recording 10 points and 13 rebounds while dishing a career-high seven assists,  It'll go down as Mehmetaj's fifth double-double of the season, and his third in the last six games.

Kasim Chandler paced four Firebirds in double figures with 27 points, while adding a game-high 10 assists.  Chandler hit 10-of-13 field goal attempts, including a perfect 4-for-4 from three-point range, but he was limited to just four free throw attempts after averaging a league-high 9.5 attempts per game coming in.

Martin Campbell hit 5-of-9 shots from three-point land as part of his 19-point effort, and Joseph Nickerson came off the bench to score 18 points for UDC.  Erin Senegal chipped in with 13 points as well.

After both teams struggled out of the gates, five-straight points by Garvin at the 9:55 mark of the opening frame ignited a 12-0 spurt for the Wildcats, turning a two-point deficit (15-13) into a 10-point advantage (25-13) with 6:26 left before halftime.  A jumper by reserve guard Jaleo Wilkes (Niagara Falls, N.Y./Polk State College) capped the run, and Daemen would not trail for the remainder of the contest.

The Wildcats led by as many as 11 points late in the first half (38-27) before the hosts closed the period with five-straight points of their own, getting one of Chandler's triples and a layup by Nickerson to go into the locker room down six.

Both teams would go on to torch the nets in the second half, combining to shoot 42-for-72  (58-percent) in the period (Daemen: 23-for-38, 61-percent; UDC: 19-for-34, 56-percent).

Daemen's lead would fluxuate between 4-9 points over the first eight minutes of the half.  A jumper by Sarkis at the 12:05 mark would put the Wildcats ahead by six (63-57).  But, UDC responded with six-straight points, pulling even on a Senegal three-pointer at the 10:42 mark.  

Garvin hit a triple shortly thereafer to put the Wildcats back ahead, but his bucket was answered with a three-pointer by Chandler which forged the fifth and final tie of the ballgame.  

Dyck's layup at the 9:29 mark put Daemen back on top and sparked a 17-7 spurt which saw the Wildcats lead by 10 (83-73)  with 6:09 to play.  Dyck accounted for seven points in the run which was capped by his one-handed slam in transition off a feed from Sarkis. 

The Firebirds gave one final push, cutting the Daemen lead to just four at 87-83 with 3:13 remaining.  But, Daemen put the game away by scoring 13 of the next 15 points, including six from Dyck.

It was the fourth 30-point game of the month for Dyck who came into tonight's matchup leading all ECC players in scoring at 23.1 points per game.  Dyck has now scored in double figures in 14-straight games and is averaging 27.4 points per game over the length of Daemen's seven-game winning streak.

The Wildcats, who have led the ECC in scoring as a team for much of the season (now at 86.2 points per game), hit the century mark for the second-straight game today, following last Sunday's 107-96 defeat of Queens College.  It's the second time in as many seasons that the Wildcats have hit the 100-point barrier in back-to-back games, doing so last season with wins over UDC (102-74 on February 6, 2015) and Dowling College (103-98 on February 13, 2015).  Daemen is now 51-2 when scoring at least 90 points dating back to the start of the 2009-10 season.

The win tonight also pushed Daemen to a 5-1 lead in the all-time series with UDC, and the Wildcats remained unbeaten in games played at the UDC Sports Complex.

Daemen returns home to face Dowling on Friday, February 5 at Lumsden Gymnasium (7 p.m. tip-off).  The Wildcats will be looking for the season sweep againt the Golden Lions for the third-straight season after winning the teams' previous matchup this year on Long Island (97-80 on December 18).