WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
>> Josh Cohen (Lincroft, N.J.) registered 19 of his Northeast Conference (NEC) career-high 31 points in the second half to propel Saint Francis men's basketball past FDU 82-72 and clinch an NEC Quarterfinal home game on Thursday night on ESPN 3/SNY.
>> Maxwell Land (Cincinnati, Ohio) also registered an NEC career high with 24 points, while Cam Gregory (Accokeek, Md.) added his first double-figure performance at DeGol Arena with 11 points.
>> With a win against Wagner on Saturday, the Red Flash will be at least the No. 3 seed in the NEC Tournament starting on Wednesday. The squad can also move up to the No. 2 seed with a win and an FDU loss at home against St. Francis Brooklyn on Saturday.

TURNING POINT OF THE GAME
Saint Francis may have taken the lead for good with 6:21 left in the first half on Luke Ruggery's (Duncansville, Pa.) second free throw at 25-24, but that doesn't mean that the game did not have its dramatics.
 
The Knights cut it to one point three times the rest of the way, but each time the Loretto program had an answer. Ruggery hit a 3-ball with 4:12 left in the first half to restore a four-point lead. After Saint Francis went into the locker room with a one-point advantage, Cohen gave the Red Flash a three-point lead after three Knights shot attempts. Gregory made two free throws with 15:45 on the clock to reclaim a three-point edge.
 
The rest of the way FDU did cut it to one possession (two or three points), four more times, but the Red Flash had the final response with an 18-10 spurt to grab a double-figure advantage in the final 72 seconds of the game.

FLASH QUOTES
"At this point in the season, it comes down to players making plays. It comes down to these guys." – head coach Rob Krimmel on this stretch

"I never asked him or Max or Josh to step up. We just told them we need you to focus a little bit more, maybe our margin's a little bit slimmer. Those bumps we took a couple of weeks back? When you're a competitor, you're going to respond. We have a locker room of competitors." – Krimmel on dealing through the Landon Moore injury

"It's really fun to play meaningful basketball this late in the year. We're just happy to be here. We don't feel we're an underdog any night. We're ready to play every game." – redshirt junior Josh Cohen on this stretch

 "I've scored a thousand in high school, a thousand in college. But I don't have any championships, and that's the one thing I'm super-focused on." – Cohen on 1,000 points and his focus

"One of our main focuses this week was to take care of the ball and get the ball to our guys where they can make plays." – junior Maxwell Land on taking care of the basketball

FLASH MOMENTS
Holding a 29-28 lead with 4:35 left in the first half, the Red Flash scored eight unanswered points to take a 37-28 advantage. Ruggery and Cohen both had three-points in the spurt and Land added two free throws.
 
Saint Francis had a 58-56 edge with 9:27 left in the game and then used a 10-2 spurt to take a 68-60 margin. Cohen was the catalyst again with five points.

FLASH NUGGETS
Cohen, who was honored before the game with his 1,000th-career point ball, finished the game 11-for-12 shooting and 9 of 13 from the free throw line. He stuffed the stat sheet with four rebounds, four assists, two blocks and one steal. With his four boards, he came the 29th player in program history with 500 career caroms and the 20th player with 1,000 points and 500 rebounds. Cohen, who has two 40-point games and a 30-point performance this season in non-conference play, notched his first career 30-point league game and marked the first time since Isaiah Blackmon had 30 points against Robert Morris on February 18, 2020, a Red Flash player registered 30 in a league game. Blackmon was ironically the 50th Anniversary DeGol Arena honoree on the night.
 
Cohen now has 609 points this season to mark the 11th time in program history a player scored 600 points in a season and the first since Darshan Luckey reached the mark in 2002-03 and 2004-05. The 609 points are the eighth most in a single-season program history. In addition, he moved into seventh place for made field goals in a single season with 231 and ninth place for made free throws with 148 in a single season. The redshirt junior also moved into 35th place on the program's all-time career scoring list with 1,065 points.
 
Land notched back-to-back 20-point performances for the second time in his career and the first time since the last weekend of games last season. After matching his NEC career-high of 21 points at LIU on February 18, Land notched a new standard in league play with 24 points and just shy of his career best of 26 points against Hartford at DeGol Arena on November 12. The junior has registered double figures in all seven home NEC games this season and 13 of the 14 games in Loretto.
 
Gregory recorded his third-straight 10+ game after posting a pair of double-figure games in Brooklyn last weekend. After notching his first three double-figure point games on the road including a career-high 15 points at Ohio State on December 3, the freshman reached double figures for the first time in front of the Red Flash faithful.
 
Ruggery added eight points, while Ronell Giles, Jr. (Brandywine, Md.) tallied five points, four rebounds and four assists. The junior registered all five of his points from the free throw line.
 
Saint Francis clinched a winning league record for fifth time under head coach Rob Krimmel and the first since the 2019-20 season. The squad registered a winning mark for four-straight campaigns ending with the 2019-20 year.

NEXT TIME OUT
The Red Flash will finish in the Top-4 of the standings and will know more about what can be accomplished as far as seeding before it tips its regular season finale against Wagner on Saturday at 4 p.m. The three other league games will start at 1 p.m.
 
Saint Francis will honor Ruggery, senior team manager Matt Kenner, redshirt seniors Marlon Hargis (Mays Landing, N.J.) and Myles Thompson (Camden, N.J.) prior to the start of the game.