Trailing 52-38 at halftime, the Belmont Abbey men's basketball team outscored Pfeiffer 55-38 in the second half, and rallied from a ten point deficit with 9:36 left in the game to defeat the Falcons 93-90 this evening in the regular season finale. The Abbey ends the regular season with a record of 16-11 overall and 14-6 in Conference Carolinas, while the Falcons are now 20-6 overall and 14-4 in Conference Carolinas.

The Crusaders were led by freshman guard Richard Barbee, who matched his career-high with 33 points on 12-19 shooting from the field. He sank two of five three-point field goal attempts and seven of his 10 free throw attempts. Senior forward Ric Marczenko posted a double double with 22 points on 7-10 shooting from the field and an 8-9 effort from the free throw line. He pulled down 13 rebounds. Jonathan Jackson added 17 points as the Abbey shot 55 percent (33-60) from the floor and 71 percent (22-31) from the free throw line.

Belmont Abbey trailed by as many as 14 points and were down 70-60 with 9:36 left before the Crusaders went on a 22-11 run over the next 5:33 to grab their first lead of the game at 82-81 on a Jackson jumper with 4:03 left to give them the lead for good. Barbee scored ten of the points on that run. Jackson pushed the lead to two, Chad Patus extended it to four and Barbee stretched it to six on a 6-0 mini run to give the Abbey an 87-81 lead with 3:07 left.

After a Pfeiffer basket cut the difference to four, Marczenko hit a jumper and later added a free throw to widen the lead to seven points, 90-83, with 1:18 left. Pfeiffer scored five unanswered to trim the advantage to 90-88 with exactly 1:00 left, but two Barbee free throws with 50 ticks remaining extended it back to four. The Falcons hit another jumper with 42 seconds left to close the lead to two.

That was all of the scoring until 13 seconds left, when Abbey guard Deonte Murphy hit the back end of a two shot foul to push the lead to three at 93-90. Pfeiffer had one last chance to win with a three-pointer,but Robert McGriff's three-point attempt fell off and Karolis Bauza cradled the rebound at the buzzer to preserve the Abbey win.

Barbee matched his career-high that he set at Mount Olive on January 21. Both of his 33 point games have come against the first and second place teams in the conference standings, both on the road.

The Abbey will be back in action Monday night in the first round of the Conference Carolinas tournament, with a time, location and opponent still to be determined.