ST. DAVIDS, Pa.– Fourteen different Eastern players scored as Eastern Men's Basketball claimed the 'Battle of Eagle Road' with an 86-57 win over the neighboring Cabrini University Cavaliers. Kaeshawn Ward and Zubair Lee each scored 12 to lead Eagles (4-0) past the Cavaliers for the fourth time since 2018. The Eagles retain the Eagle Road sign that has served as the traveling trophy since the two teams went to a single-game series in 2008.

Lee and Ward got the capacity crowd going from the opening tip as Ward flipped a lob and Lee hammered home a dunk from the right side of the rim. Ward finished the night with a game-high seven assists. The Eagles raced to a 9-to-2 lead and forced an early Cabrini timeout. The Cavaliers (1-2) closed the gap and tied the score at 11 before Ward sparked a 10-to-0 run with a driving lay-up off a hand-off from Eljay Morris. Sam Gallardo had four points,  two steals , two assists and a rebound in the burst. The senior guard finished the game with 11 points, six steals, four rebounds, and four assists.

The Cavaliers again made a run and twice cut the Eastern lead to four points, but Ward converted a three-point play with just less than three minutes to play and the Eagles build the lead to 35-22 on a lay-up from Jairus Carroll with 100 second left in the half. The Eagles led 36-26 at the break.

The Eagles had nine assists on 14 first-half baskets and had a 26-16 edge in points in the paint. To help keep the Cavaliers from the basket, Jaron Fairweather had three blocked shots and Kevin Reeves had two. Cabrini guard Ahmadu Sarnor led all scorers with 11 at halftime. Gallardo led the Eagles with nine. The Eagles shot only 1-of-9 from behind the arc.

Cabrini cut the Eastern lead to seven with a little burst early in the second half, but Fairweather sparked an 8-to-0 run with a basket in transition. He then found Ward for a 3-pointer and on the next possession Ward found Kevin Reeves for a long-range effort. The Cavaliers held ground for a bit before the Eastern lead grew to 22 points with a 12-0 run that included a Davin Hernandez 3-pointer, a three-point play from Lee and a four-point play from Carroll.

Down the stretch, three Eastern players scored their first baskets of the year to cap the game and send the Eastern crowd away happy. In scoring 50 second-half points, the Eagles were 6-of-10 from behind the arc and 12-of-15 from the foul line.

"First off," Head Coach Dan Pruessner said after the game. "What a great environment? Our student section was amazing, and the guys were pumped to play at home. So some of the miscues can be attributed to being a little keyed up. We look at tonight and we see some amazing things and some things that kind of drive us crazy. The potential is there, but we also see the areas we have to fix. They got a lot of long rebounds on the offensive glass, but we gave up way too many (23) offensive rebounds. We felt like we had a bunch of silly turnovers, and yet we still figured out a way to score nearly a full point per possession."

"Sam was all over the place defensively tonight," he continued. "Zubair brought great energy and did a really nice job contesting at the rim without fouling. I love the we have 18 assists and that made our foul shots. We have two more very challenging home games this week, and we would love to keep building off the things we did well while continuing to get better."    

On Thursday at 7:00, the Eagles host a Lancaster Bible College team that returns the bulk of its talent from a team that went 23-8 last year. The Eagles will then host Haverford College on Saturday at 2:00 pm. The Fords took No. 22 Wesleyan to overtime and beat Bowdoin in their first two games of the year.