READING, Pa.•Eastern University Men's Basketball made 20-of-30 second-half shots to overtake Albright and complete the team's sweep of Reading for the year with a 74-62 win at Albright. With the win and other results in the league, the Eagles (17-7, 9-4) secured the third seed in the upcoming MAC Commonwealth tournament. Zubair Lee led the Eagles with 22 points and nine rebounds.

The Eagles used a 32-to-12 run in the second half to erase a nine-point halftime deficit. In the three MAC Commonwealth games with post-season ramifications, all three teams in lower spots in the standings were leading. While Albright never gained a double-digit lead over Eastern, Alvernia had a 16-point edge over Hood with three minutes left in the first half. York led by four at halftime over Widener at halftime and was up by as many as six.

The decisive run in the game came with Albright up by eight five minutes into the second half. Jaron Fairweather and Zubair Lee drew fouls on consecutive plays and Lee made a pair of free throws to close the gap to six at 42-36. After an Albright miss, Lee cleared the boards and Kaeshawn Ward found Fairweather in transition.

Albright's Eric Chamberlain had 14 points at halftime, and the Lions looked to isolate their start guard for a needed score to stop the run. Fairweather held his ground in the match-up and forced a tough fall-away. Lee cleared the rebound and threw ahead. Fairweather made the contested lay-up and drew a foul to force an Albright timeout. Fairweather made the free throw, and the Eagles locked in for another defensive possession. This time it was Ward who forced the tough shot and grabbed the rebound and threw the ball ahead. Lee punched home the alley-oop dunk from Fairweather to give the Eagles their first lead of the game.

The two teams traded baskets before Lee scored on a great bounce pass from Kevin Reeves and Arkese Claiborne made a pair of baskets to put the Eagles up for good.

Lee hit a 3-pointer with eight minutes left for a 56-50 lead. The Eagles only attempted nine 3-pointers in the game but were 2-fo-2 in the second half. Lee had 15 of his 22 points in the first 12 minutes of the second half.

"We did a really good job getting the ball inside in the beginning of the second half," Head Coach Dan Pruessner said after the game. "We lost a little momentum in the first half when Zu picked up his second foul, but when we were not able to get things in transition we got Zubair the ball. When they brought help we were able to find some driving lanes, when they did not, Zu was pretty efficient."

The Eastern lead grew to 12 on back-to-back dunks from Lee and Fairweather. Albright closed the gap to nine with 2:45 to play, but Claiborne answered with a 3-pointer at the other end.

In the second half, Lee had 17 points, eight rebounds and three assists, and Fairweather had 11. Claiborne had nine of his 12 after the break.

The Eagles made only 9-of-33 in the first half and were 1-for-7 from deep.

"They came out and hit shots early," Pruessner continued. "We tightened up a little after that. I thought Jaron had a couple huge plays on defense and in transition. He attacked the rim and finished well for a pretty quiet 16. Kaeshawn had a great floor game with eight assists and one turnover against a really good defensive guard in Chamberlain. This was a really good team win for us."

As York wound up falling at Widener, and Alvernia could not hold off Hood, the Eagles are now locked into the third spot and will travel to Hood for a MAC Commonwealth Tournament game next Wednesday. Widener, the top seed, will host either Alvernia or York. York needs to win at Hood and get a Stevenson win over Alvernia to become the fourth seed. The Spartans are the only team to beat Widener, Hood, and Eastern this year, but they lost twice to Alvernia, the second of those losses was in triple overtime, so the Golden Wolves hold the tiebreaker.

Albright (11-13, 4-9) had won two straight coming into tonight's game.

The Eagles close out the regular season at Messiah on Saturday. Tip-off for that game is scheduled for 4 pm.