Garden City, N.Y. - The Adelphi University men's basketball team had less than 10 seconds left in its season, but when all was said and done, Conor McGuinness and Terrel Martin-Garcia had other ideas.

With the Panthers trailing the American International College Yellow Jackets by one at 77-76, and Adelphi needing a win to leapfrog AIC and make the Northeast-10 Conference tournament, the point guard found the big man under the basket, and Martin-Garcia put in the game-winning layup as time nearly expired to send Adelphi into the postseason, 78-77.

With the win, Adelphi clinches the No.5 seed out of the Southwest Division in the upcoming playoffs, and will travel to the fourth-seeded team out of the Northeast Division, Stonehill College, for a 7 p.m. first round game on Friday, Feb. 23.

Adelphi needed every one of the ticks on the clock in the 40 minutes of regulation after holding a three-point lead at halftime and trailing by as much as five at the midway point of the second half. Michael Coffey pumped in a game-high 24 points on his Senior Night on 50 percent shooting from the floor (8-for-16) while classmate Martin-Garcia had 12 points and six rebounds.

Jack Laffey added 19 points off the bench, while McGuinness totaled 11 assists in the contest despite being held to just three points. 

On a made three from Coffey at the 16:16 mark in the second half, Adelphi led by eight, 56-48, and forced AIC to use a timeout to talk things over after being outscored 12-7 to begin the second half. Out of the break, the Yellow Jackets surged from three-point range, sinking a trio of deep shots and scoring 11 of the next 14 points to tie the game at 59-59. 

The run extended to 19-6 for the visitors as they built their five-point edge at 10:41 (67-62) on an Andrew Anderson dunk, but Adelphi never proved out of the contest as the two teams traded shots from deep and the lead changed hands four times until Coffey drove to the basket for two to knot the score at 75-75 with 1:31 remaining. 

After Zekaih Owens sank two from the line and Coffey responded with one of two on his next trip up the floor, it was a key defensive rebound - a statistic in which Adelphi was dominated overall, 43-22, in the game - by Nick Cambio off a missed three-pointer from Kassim Kaba with 30 seconds left that help set the stage for Adelphi's dramatic victory. 

The Panthers will head into Friday's first round playoff game having defeated Stonehill in the teams' regular-season meeting, a 97-89 win in Garden City on Jan. 27.

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About Adelphi Athletics
Adelphi University joined the Northeast-10 Conference in the fall of 2009, and in the past eight seasons, has collected 25 regular season conference titles, 26 tournament championships, 33 individual crowns and captured the Northeast-10 Presidents' Cup four times (2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017), while winning six NCAA Division II National Championships.

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