ST. DAVIDS, Pa.– Eastern University Men's Basketball fought through a sluggish performance in a physical game to earn an 80-72 MAC Commonwealth win over the visiting Albright College Lions. Arkese Claiborne and Jaron Fairweather each had 21 points in the win.

The Eagles (13-5- 5-2) built an 11-4 lead early, but the game stayed close through the first half. Despite holding the Lions to only 15 points in the first 12 and a half minutes, the Eagles only led 18-15. Kaeshawn ward hit a 3-pointer and a driving lay-up to stretch the lead a little, but the Eagles were unable to impose their will at the other end of the floor and the Lions answered with five straight points.

The Eagles stretched their lead to ten on a Fairweather 3-pointer in transition with 2:22 on the clock, but again Albright had an answer with a 6-to-1 run. Fairweather connected on third 3-pointer of the first half with 24 seconds left in the half, but Eastern's 39-31 halftime lead felt uncertain.

Fairweather had 15 first half points on nine shots and Claiborne had 12 on five. Eric Chamberlain had nine first-half points for the visitors.

"We did not bring the energy we needed to bring tonight," Head Coach Dan Pruessner said after the game. "Our guys know it. We let them get to too many spots on the floor too easily."

Early in the second half, the Eagles went up 10 on Fairweather's fourth 3-pointer of the game and had a chance to stretch the lead on a 3-on-1 run-out following a Fairweather steal, but lob pass went awry and the Eagles failed to slam the door on the game.

Albright (9-9, 2-5) took advantage. The Lions traded a few baskets and then pushed out a 10-to-2 run to pull within a point at 48-47 with 13 minutes left. After a steal, Albright had a chance at the lead, but a pair of miss free throws kept the Eagles in front. Nick Mate buried a 3-pointer to stretch the lead.

The Lions continued to score from the foul line and the paint and  grabbed a brief lead at 54-53. Zubair Lee split a pair of free throws to tie the game. Lee then put the Eagles up for good after Fairweather hit him on a deep pass for a breakaway dunk. Davin Hernandez then stole a long pass and found Fairweather for a transition three-point play.

Fairweather finished with three steals and three assists to go with his 21 points on 8-of-14 shooting. Lee had 14 points and ten rebounds.

The Lions answered Fairweather's effort with a 3-pointer from Isaac Lapierre. Eljay Morris started an 8-to-1 run with a strong inside move. With Ward and DaRon Sherman on the bench with four fouls, Dominic Sarigumba was in the game for critical minutes. The first year guard, hit a tough eight-footer with the shot clock running down to put the Eagles up 63-58. Lee then found Claiborne for consecutive baskets to put the Eagles up nine with 5:28 to play. The second of those was a dunk in traffic.

"Dom played some really big minutes for us," Pruessner continued. " He was not afraid of the moment to hit a big shot, and he did a good job getting us into the offense against a really good and aggressive defender. Even after that run with Arkese making the dunk, we still could not pull away."

After Albright closed the gap to three at 71-68, Lee had a big three-point play on a tough spinning lay-up. After Albright got another inside basket, Ward hit a tough step-back jumper to stretch the lead back to six. Chamberlain took advantage of Eastern foul trouble at nearly every spot to get into the lane for another inside basket with 1:09 to play.

Ward again had an answer. After milking the shot clock nearly the entire way down, the senior point guard found Eljay Morris at the rim. Morris banked in the short shot as the shot clock sounded. Ward's assist, his sixth of the game, moves him past current assistant coach Austin Carroll on Eastern's career list. He is now sixth all time with 295 assists. He made two more free throws to seal the game.

Albright shot 51.9 percent from the floor in the second half. Chamberlain finished with 21 points/ Chris Kouemi had 13 points and 10 rebounds. Eljay Morris had six points and seven rebounds. The two teams combined for 55 free throws.

"We made enough plays down the stretch to win." Pruessner concluded " It was great to see Arkese be aggressive offensively and have some shots fall. When we went into the locker room, there was some real disappointment with the way we played. It was almost like a loss. It is good that these guys know what the standard is and understand that we will need to be better tahn we were tonight as we hit the second have of the schedule. We are at York on Saturday. They just smacked Widener and Hood in their last two games. People are going to adjust the second time through, so we will have to be ready to go."

The Eagles beat York 85-69 in an early January game in St. Davids.