DAYTONA BEACH, FL – December 29, 2017 - The Colby-Sawyer men's basketball team returned to action on Friday evening at the 2017 Land of Magic Classic held in Daytona Beach, Fla. and came away with an 81-71 victory over Brooklyn College.

Colby-Sawyer improves to 6-2 and will play Norwich University (1-7) tomorrow at 1 p.m. on the final day of the tournament. Norwich fell to Wilkes (6-4) 97-74 on Friday afternoon. Brooklyn drops to 0-10 and will return to New York to host John Jay in a CUNYAC matchup on Wednesday, January 3 at 7:15 p.m.

Sophomore Dana Bean (Franklin, N.H.) led all players with 27 points on 12-of-18 shooting. He added eight rebounds. Junior Jourdain Bell (Manchester, N.H.) went 9-of-15 from the floor to finish with 21 points. Senior Taylor Grande (Bedford, N.H.) added seven points, eight rebounds and three assists. Grande moved into 10th on the all-time assists list with 320.

Senior Ben Batash (Queens, N.Y.) led Brooklyn with 17 points. Freshman Alpha Bah (Brooklyn, N.Y.) scored 16 on 7-of-12, while senior Niv Konfino (Tel Aviv, Israel) made 7-of-9 shots for 15 points.

The Chargers held a nine-point lead after an Erik Olson (Dracut, Mass.) layup 5:11 into the second half before Brooklyn received five consecutive points from Batash to cut the deficit to 45-41. An Austin Boudreau (Old Orchard Beach, Maine) three-pointer pushed the Colby-Sawyer advantage back to nine, 53-44, with 13:25 to play. The Bulldogs came within four points again at 60-56 with 8:51 to play, but Colby-Sawyer responded with a 9-0 run capped by a Boudreau trey to take a 69-56 lead with 5:32 left. Noah Shy (Valley Stream, N.Y.) knocked down a three to bring Brooklyn within seven, 71-64, with just over four minutes to play, but the Chargers answered with four points to push the lead back to 11 and hung on for the 81-71 win.

Colby-Sawyer opened the game with an 8-0 run after five points from Bean and a Bell three-pointer that forced a Brooklyn timeout at 17:40. The Bulldogs battled back with a 7-2 run to close the gap to 10-7, five minutes into the action. The teams traded baskets for the next several minutes to keep the game within two possessions with Colby-Sawyer leading throughout. The Chargers went in front by seven after a Boudreau three-pointer, 26-19, with 5:49 left in the frame. The Colby-Sawyer advantage went to 10 after an Olson jumper with 44 seconds remaining. With 22 seconds left, Brooklyn's Batash split a pair of free throws to make the halftime score 34-25 in favor of Colby-Sawyer.
  
Colby-Sawyer outrebounded Brooklyn 47-28 and held a 25-12 advantage in second chance points.

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