READING, Pa. – The Albright men's basketball team bounced back as they picked up a convincing 96-76 win over Widener in MAC Commonwealth play on Saturday afternoon at the Bollman Center.
 
The Lions rebounded from last night's overtime heartbreaker to the Pride by improving to 1-1 overall and in MAC Commonwealth play. Meanwhile, the Pride suffered its first loss of the season as they fell to 3-1 overall and in conference play.
 
Senior Sidney Brown paced the Lions offense with a team-high 18 points behind going 7-of-10 from the field, and 4-6 from beyond the arc. Junior Corey Simmons just missed on a double-double as he posted 13 points on 6-of-10 shooting from the field, and nine rebounds. Senior Troy Smoot tallied 13 points on 5-of-8 shooting from the field, while adding three assists and two steals off the bench. Senior Samuel Majekodunmi dished out a game-high six assists and scored seven points in the win.
 
Albright scored six-straight points after the Pride notched the opening basket of the game to go up 6-2 at the 17:53-mark of the first half. Widener rallied to tie the game at 10 with 13:46 left in the first half as the teams began trading the lead over the next three minutes. Leading 22-20 at the 7:53-mark of the first half, the Lions used an 8-2 run to take their largest lead of the game to that point at 30-22 with 4:19 remaining in the first half. The Pride were only able to get as close as four points to Albright in the rest of the first half as the Lions maintained a 39-31 advantage at halftime. Smoot scored the final five points for the Lions in the first half.
 
The Pride immediately erased the Lions lead with eight-straight points in the first 1:06 of the second half to tie the game at 39 points, forcing an Albright timeout. Brown began to heat up from the field out of the timeout as he scored seven points in the ensuing Lions 11-4 run, putting the Lions up 50-43 at the 14:49-mark of the second half.  Brown then hit back-to-back three-pointers to give Albright a 58-45 advantage at the 13:23-mark of the second half. Widener scored five-straight points to cut the Lions lead down to 58-50, but that would be as close as they would get for the rest of the game. Albright responded with five-straight points of their own to go up 63-50 at the 11:50-mark of the second half, and did not let the lead fall under double-digits again. The Lions continued to control play as they amassed a lead that went as large as 24 points with 3:06 remaining in regulation.
 
The Lions shot 55.2 percent (37-of-67) from the field overall after shooting a blistering 61.8 percent in the second half. Albright went 11-of-25 (44%) from three-point range and 11-of-20 (55%) from the free throw line. The Lions held a slight 36-31 rebounding advantage and received 46 points from its bench. Meanwhile, the Pride went 46.3 percent (31-of-67) from the field after shooting 53.1 percent in the second half. Widener went just 5-of-17 (29.4%) from beyond the arc, and 60 percent (9-of-15) from the free throw line.
 
Jared Peters led the Pride with a game-high 19 points on 8-of-11 shooting from the field, while Steven Matlack added 12 points and five rebounds. After tallying 19 points and scoring the game-winning basket in overtime the night before, Pat Holden was held to just three points.
 
Albright will return to action on Thursday, February 25^th as they will travel to face Delaware Valley in MAC crossover action at 7 p.m.