St. Davids, Pa. (Feb. 15, 2007) – Senior guard Garrett Etzel (Shillington, PA/Governor Mifflin) scored a game-high 29 points and became the 19th men’s player in Alvernia College history to surpass 1,000 career points as the Crusaders downed Eastern University 84-74 Thursday evening in Pennsylvania Athletic Conference men’s basketball action at Eastern.

            Fellow senior Ryan Finger (Lancaster, PA/Lampeter Strasburg) came within an assist of recording the second triple-double in school history finishing with 16 points, 12 rebounds, and a game-high nine assists.  Terrence Shawell (Pottstown, PA/Pottstown) also reached double figures for the Crusaders (21-4, 16-2 PAC) with 17 points.

            Alvernia, which wrapped up its second straight regular season championship last week, will have a first-round bye when the PAC Championship starts on Saturday and host the highest remaining seed in a quarterfinal match on Tuesday.

            Etzel found Shawell for an alley-oop to open the scoring and the Crusaders never trailed.  Alvernia opened up a 10-point lead at 19-9 just shy of nine minutes into play and the lead grew to its largest of the opening half when Finger scored to put Alvernia up 25-12 at the 10:10 mark.  Eastern ( rattled off seven straight points after the Finger bucket to cut the gap to six, and had the deficit to five, 34-29 at the break.

            Etzel led the Crusaders with 13 points in the first half and reached 1,000 on his first bucket of the second half.  Freshman forward Nick Rivera (Reading, PA/Holy Name) scored three of his five to cap a 9-0 Alvernia run midway through the second half that put the guests up 16 points, 56-40, with 11:45 to play.

            Eastern needed four minutes to cut that gap in half, but Alvernia came back with seven straight to regain a 15-point lead with 5:35 to play.  Two minutes later Alvernia sophomore Tyrone Bradley (Chester, PA/Chester) hit a pair of free throws as the Eagles attempted to lengthen the game, but Alvernia didn’t help hitting 16 free throws in the final 3-plus minutes to finish the regular season with a seven-game win streak.

            Freshman Jason Reels (Paterson, NJ/Hawthorne Academy) led the Eagles with 20 points, David Volpe (Harleysville, PA/Christopher Dock) scored 18 points, and Lenny DiMaria (Lincroft, NJ/Middletown South) added 16.

            Eastern will enter the PAC Championship as the fourth seed and will host #5 Neumann College on Saturday.  The other quarterfinal will feature #6 Wesley, who qualified for the postseason with a 75-65 win over Misericordia on Thursday, visiting #3 Immaculata.  Alvernia will host the highest remaining seed Tuesday and #2 Gwynedd-Mercy will host the other remaining team.

            Alvernia, a three-time PAC Champion, defeated Wesley College in last season’s PAC Final.

Alvernia 84, Eastern 74