WALTHAM, Mass. – First place in the Northeast-10 Conference's Northeast Division will be at stake Saturday when the Bentley University men's basketball team travels to Manchester, N.H. to take on Saint Anselm College. Tip-off at Stoutenburgh Gym is set for 3:30 pm with a webcast available at www.saintanselmhawks.tv.

Bentley, 18-6 overall and 15-4 NE-10, will head into the game with a one-game lead over the Hawks, who are the number one-ranked team in the NCAA Division II East Region. Despite dropping three of their last five, Saint Anselm is 19-5 overall and 14-5 in conference.

A Falcon win in the penultimate game of the regular season would give Bentley, number five in the region, the division title. On the other hand, a Hawk victory would create a tie for first with each club having one game left. On Tuesday, the final day of the regular season, coach Jay Lawson's team, will be at home to take on Merrimack while Saint Anselm will travel across town to face intercity nemesis Southern New Hampshire.

Two individual milestones will be within reach on Saturday as senior All-Conference forward Tyler McFarland (Rockport, Maine/Camden Hills HS), Bentley's top scorer for the fourth straight season, is 12 points away from becoming the third 2,000-point scorer in Falcon history and senior guard Alex Furness (Wells, Maine/Wells HS) is 16 shy of 1,000. Both players came to Bentley after prepping at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass.

McFarland, the Northeast-10's leading scorer, is averaging 22.8 points, a point production level that matches the school record set by Ray Anderson in in 1968-69. He was limited to ten points in Wednesday's 77-60 win over St. Michael's after averaging 27.6 in his previous five. The six-foot-five Academic All-America® candidate has also been asserting himself on the boards with 43 in his last five games.

Furness, one of Division II's best in terms of three-point accuracy, is averaging 13.7 points while shooting 48 percent from deep and 91 percent from the foul stripe. He's had a season-best 21 points four times, including Dec. 2 in the earlier Saint Anselm game, an 86-78 Bentley homecourt victory.

Graduate student Keegan Hyland (South Portland, Maine/South Portland HS), who is looking to earn CoSIDA Academic All-America honors for the second time, has seen his scoring average climb from 14.6 after the first Saint Anselm game to 20.6, fourth best in the NE-10. Over the last eight, he's scored 30 or more four times while averaging 27.4. He's knocked down 35 3's during that stretch, including five in each of the last three games.

Junior guard Ferguson Duke (Dartmouth, N.S./Hun School), who rejoined the above three and sophomore forward Brandon Wheeler (Stamford, Conn./Trinity Catholic HS) in the starting lineup Wednesday, scored 10 against St. Michael's, his first double-digit effort in about nine weeks. In the seven games Lawson has gone with that five, his team has won seven of eight.

Saint Anselm and Bentley are 1-2 in the NE-10 in field goal percentage with the Hawks at .504 overall and the Falcons at .479. Saint Anselm is also number one in three-point accuracy (.436) while no NE-10 team makes as many from deep as Bentley's 10.7 a game.

Saint Anselm, coming off a 71-66 win over Stonehill, has been outstanding at home this season, winning 11 of 12. Coach Keith Dickson's team has put up nearly 89 points in those 12 contests while shooting .513 overall and .444 from downtown. They've had trouble away from Stoutenburgh of late, losing their last three road games.

All five Hawk starters average in doubles with senior forward Mike McCahey at the top of the list. He has made 44 percent of his threes and is averaging 18.6 points and 6.4 rebounds. Junior Harrison Taggart, a .473 shooter from downtown with 61 threes to his credit, follows at 16.0 ppg.

Senior guard Victor Joshua (14.6 ppg) and junior wing Chris Braley (11.8) are two of the top four in the NE-10 in field goal percentage, and guard Tim Guers (10.5) is having a strong freshman season.

In the December 2nd game, McFarland scored a game-high 26, three more than McCahey put up, with the two leading scorers both 10 of 18 from the floor. The Falcons shot better (49-45 percent), made one more three (10-9), got to the line 13 more times (23-10) and forced 19 turnovers for a 24-11 points-off advantage.