WALTHAM, Mass. – A trip to Evansville, Ind. for the NCAA Men's Basketball Division II Elite Eight will be on the line when the Bentley University Falcons host St. Thomas Aquinas College in the East Region championship game Tuesday night at 7 pm at the Dana Center.

The two teams have the best records in the region this season with top-seeded Bentley, the 14^th-ranked team in Division II, 24-4 overall and STAC, the seventh-seeded team in the region, 28-4. Bentley, the Northeast-10 champion, has won six in a row and STAC, champion of the East Coast Conference, has a 16-game winning streak.

Bentley advanced to the Sweet 16 with a lopsided victory over Felician, 95-63, and an overtime win over Pace, 96-84 after outscoring the Setters 16-4 in the extra session.

St. Thomas Aquinas needed to come from behind in both its regional games. The Spartans outscored Franklin Pierce 50-30 in the second half for a 76-69 win and closed Sunday's semifinal game against New Haven with a 40-16 run after trailing by 14 with 12 minutes to play.

Bentley is seeking its first Elite Eight since advancing three times in four years from 2007-10 while St. Thomas Aquinas, a regional finalist for the third time in four years, captured its lone East Regional championship in 2017. It will be the first time the two programs have ever met in men's basketball.

After having a six-point slip away in the final 40 seconds of regulation, Bentley put that aside and took charge of the overtime from the start. It was eight straight points out of the gate, including two three-balls from graduate guard Colton Lawrence (Myerstown, Pa./ELCO HS). Senior guard Brian Wright-Kinsey (Brooklyn, N.Y./ Brooks School) made it a 9-point game with a triple with 82 seconds to play, and graduate guard Jordan Mello-Klein (Sharon/Thayer Academy) closed out Pace by making three of four free throws in the final minute.

Sophomore guard Zach Laput (Beacon Falls, Conn./Notre Dame HS), who bettered his career-best with 26 points Sunday, is Bentley's top scorer and second-leading rebounder in the regional with averages of 22 points and 8.5 boards. He's made 7 of 12 three-pointers and is shooting .583 overall.

Senior guard Mason Webb (Oklahoma City, Okla./Bishop McGuinness), whose eight three-pointers in the Felician game tied a school record, has 39 points in the two NCAA games, boosting his career total to 993, and has connected on 9 of 14 treys. Lawrence, 7 of 14 from deep in the regional, averaged 16.5 points in the two wins. Mello-Klein, in the two regional games, has totaled 27 points, 22 rebounds, 12 assists and four steals.

One of four Falcons averaging at least 15 points a game for the full season, Mello-Klein ranks in the top ten nationally in defensive rebounding and contributes an average of 15.1 points, 8.6 rebounds, 5.4 assists and 2.3 steals a game.   

The semifinal win included a total of 17 points and ten rebounds from graduate post players Pete Blust (Hinsdale, Ill./Hinsdale Central HS) and Adria Amabilino Perez (Barcelona, Spain). Amabilino Perez came up big off the bench against Pace with 11 points, four rebounds, two assists and two blocks. Blust, for the season, has a .590 field goal percentage and 56 blocks.

St. Thomas Aquinas has been sparked in the NCAA regional by senior guards Demetre Roberts and Grant Singleton, each of whom has a 20-point game. Roberts has averaged 17 points, four rebounds, 4.5 assists and two steals while Singleton, 5 of 11 from deep, has produced 16.5 points a game. Roberts is the team's top scorer for the season, averaging 16.2 points as well as over four assists. Singleton's 11.9 average is third on the team, behind Osbel Carabello's 14.6.

Bentley and St. Thomas Aquinas are both in the top three in the East Region in assist-turnover ratio, assists, free throw percentage, scoring margin, scoring, and winning percentage. The Falcons are second nationally in rebound margin and eighth in three-point accuracy, and STAC is one of the nation's best in terms of steals and forcing turnovers.

Taking care of the ball is usually a strength of the veteran Falcons, but that wasn't the case against Pace when Bentley turned it over 20 times, well above the season average of 12.2.