WALTHAM, Mass. – Five days after completing the regular season by reaching the 20-win plateau for the 18^th time in program history, the Bentley University men's basketball team will host Le Moyne College Sunday at 3:30 pm in the quarterfinals of the Northeast-10 Championships. As always, the game will be streamed on the NE10 NOW Digital Network.

Bentley enters the postseason at 20-5 overall following Tuesday's 78-63 win over American International. The Falcons are seeded third in the championships and were number one in this week's NCAA Division II East Regional rankings.

Le Moyne, the sixth seed, will make the trip east with a 15-14 overall record following a thrilling 77-74 first-round win over St. Michael's College Friday night, a game that featured 12 ties and a half-dozen lead changes. The Dolphins closed out the game with an 18-9 run over the final 5:40.

The two teams met once during the regular season with Bentley winning out in Syracuse in convincing fashion, 86-61. The Falcons shot 56 percent overall, limited the Dolphins to 31 percent and owned the boards, 46-29. Junior guard Zach Laput (Beacon Falls, Conn./Notre Dame HS) erupted for 27 points and graduate guard Brian Wright-Kinsey (Brooklyn, N.Y./Brooks School) came away with a career-high 14 rebounds.

No one in the conference has a better scoring average than Laput, who is averaging 20.3 points as well as 6.6 rebounds, three assists and 1.1 steals. The only Northeast-10 player named to the top 50 list for the Bevo Francis Award, he's had 17 20-point games and four double-doubles.  His seven assists in the AIC game Tuesday was a career-best.

Following Laput on the Bentley scoring list are grad students Matt Leritz (St. Louis, Mo./St. Louis University) and Mason Webb (Oklahoma City, Okla./Bishop McGuinness HS), at 14.1 and 14.0 respectively. Leritz also claims 9.3 rebounds a game, second most in the conference, and had 20 boards in the AIC game, most by a Falcon in 45 years. Webb has averaged 16.7 points over the last 11 games, a stretch in which she has made 35 of 78 three-pointers (.449).

Junior guard Aaron Latham (Glastonbury, Conn./Glastonbury HS) has an 11.2 average in his first season as a starter and shoots an even 50 percent overall. Wright-Kinsey has 57 stocks this season, tied for third most in the conference, while also contributing 9.8 points and 7.5 rebounds a game.

Bentley leads the Northeast-10 in both scoring margin (+12.6) and rebound differential (+9.5) while shooting a conference-best .499 overall.

Four players scored in doubles for Le Moyne in its first-round win, including ____ Nate McClure with 15 and junior guard Darrick Jones Jr. with 14. Graduate transfer Mike DePersia had a strong performance at the defensive end with four steals and two blocks.

Le Moyne, which has won six of its last nine following a four-game losing streak in mid-January, is led offensively by graduate guard Isaiah Salter, who previously played for AIC and Adelphi, and six-seven junior transfer Luke Sutherland, both of whom average between 11 and 12 a game. They've combined for 96 three-pointers with Salter's 62 ninth most in the conference.

DePersia is number two in the NE10 in steals (55) and six-seven senior Xavier Wilson is third in blocks (34).

Le Moyne will come into the game number one in the NE10 in blocks (5.), third in steals (7.7), sixth in scoring (72.5) and seventh in scoring defense (70.6).

Strangely enough, this is only the second time that these two programs have met in a postseason game. The previous time came during Bentley's outstanding 2007-08 season (34-1), a 67-64 Falcon win in OT in the NE10 quarters. In that one, recent Bentley Hall of Fame inductee Jason Westrol gave Bentley a 66-64 lead with a three-point play with 30 seconds to play and the Dolphins missed two shots to tie in the final 15 seconds. Yusuf Abdul-Ali led the Falcons with 23 and Westrol finished with 20.

Bentley leads the all-time series 26-10 and has won eight of the last nine meetings.

In Wednesday's semifinals, the Bentley-Le Moyne winner will be paired the advancing team from the game between second-seeded Saint Anselm and seventh-seeded Pace. In the other quarterfinal pairings, top-seeded and regular season champion Southern New Hampshire is at home against number eight Franklin Pierce and in a crosstown match-up, fifth-seeded Southern Connecticut is at number four New Haven.

The championship game will be next Saturday with the highest remaining seed the home team.