BALTIMORE, Md. – For the second year in a row, the William & Mary men's basketball team and Hofstra engaged in a back-and-forth, high-intensity and entertaining CAA Semifinal at Royal Farms Arena. Unfortunately for the Tribe (20-11), the storybook ending was not in the cards on Sunday afternoon as the Pride scored the game's final five points to pull out a narrow 70-67 win. Denton Koon's lay-up with 8.5 seconds remaining gave Hofstra (24-8) the lead for good, and David Cohn's potential game-winning 3-pointer was off the mark. All told, the game featured 11 lead changes and eight ties, including seven minutes and six seconds of deadlocked hoops.  
 
Sophomore Greg Malinowski enjoyed a breakout game and the best of his career, scoring a team-high 22 points on 7-of-10 shooting, including 5-of-8 from 3-point range. Junior Daniel Dixon added 10 points, hitting 2-of-3 from long range, while senior Sean Sheldon and Cohn added nine apiece. Cohn also dished out a team-high four assists, while senior Terry Tarpey topped the Tribe with six rebounds to go with two steals.
 
Neither team led by more than six points the entire afternoon and the final 20 minutes was a high-wire act of emotions. Hofstra scored eight-straight points as part of a 13-3 overall run to open up its largest lead of the game. The Pride canned five straight shots during the stretch. Lay-ups from Desure Buie, Koon and the final one from Juan'ya Green flipped a four-point Tribe lead to a 60-56 Pride advantage. After Cohn briefly stemmed the tide with a 3-pointer from left side of the key, Green answered with a triple and Tanksley's driving lay-up extend the Hofstra advantage to its largest at 65-59 with 4:27 left.
 
Following a Tribe timeout, the Green and Gold went on an 8-0 run to surge back in front. Dixon and Malinowski canned back-to-back triples from opposite wings to draw W&M even. A Cohn driving lay-up at the 2:55 mark put the Green and Gold in front, 67-65.
 
A pair of Green free throws with 1:49 left tied the game for the eighth and final time. Junior Omar Prewitt, a First Team All-CAA selection, had a pair of chances to give W&M the lead once again. His 3-pointer from the left wing rimmed out and he missed a floater in the lane with 38 seconds remaining.
 
With the shot clock winding down, Green hit Koon with a pass in the post, and he finished through a tough contest from both Dixon and Tarpey with 8.5 seconds on the clock. Cohn took the inbounds pass and raced up the court, but his top of the key 3-point attempt hit the rim and bounded away. Tanksley hit 1-of-2 from the free throw line in the closing seconds, and the Tribe could not get off a desperation attempt to tie with 1.2 seconds remaining.
 
The Tribe shot 46.4 percent (26-of-56) from the floor, including 9-of-20 (45 percent) beyond the 3-point arc. Hofstra finished at 46.3 percent (25-of-54) shooting and connected on 56 percent (14-of-25) in the second half. The Pride also hit 11-of-32 (34.4 percent) from 3-point range and held a slim 32-29 advantage on the glass.
 
After a Sheldon hook opened the scoring, Hofstra used an 8-2 run sparked by 3-pointers from Koon and Green to take the lead. Brian Bernardi's driving reverse lay-up five minutes into the contest gave Hofstra a 12-6 lead.
 
The Tribe bench again provided a huge spark, scoring 19 of W&M's 34 points in the opening half. Five quick points on a Malinowski 3-pointer from the left corner off a no-look pass from sophomore Oliver Tot and a driving layup from sophomore Connor Burchfield cut the margin to 12-11 with 12:32 to play in the first half.
 
W&M pulled even at 14 on a Prewitt 3-pointer from the right wing. Six straight Green and Gold points, including a Whitman banking jumper in the paint, gave W&M the lead, 22-20, with 5:49 remaining in the frame.
 
Koon answered with a 3-pointer for the Pride, before a driving lay-up from Tanksley extended its lead to 25-22. The Green and Gold answered with a 10-2 run fueled by steals and Malinowski 3-pointers. The Tribe sophomore drilled back-to-back triples to put the Tribe on top. Consecutive steals on the defensive end led to fast-break lay-ups on the other the Green and Gold. Tarpey whipped a behind-the-back pass to Burchfield for an easy two, extending the lead to 32-27 and forcing a Hofstra timeout with 1:25 left. Another Burchfield bucket on a leaner in the paint sent the Tribe to the locker room with a 34-30 advantage.
 
The teams traded buckets in the early going of the second half. Back-to-back 3-pointers from Bernardi and Green gave the Pride a 43-41 lead, three minutes into the final frame. Not to be out done, Dixon and Malinowski responded with two-straight triples of their own to re-establish the Tribe's four-point advantage just a minute and a half later.
 
Bernardi and Tanksley 's 3-pointers gave the Pride a 52-50 lead at the 11-minute mark, but the Tribe scored six straight to maintain its four-point cushion. Tot banked in a shot from the left side to pull W&M even, before a Malinowski steal resulted in a fast-break lay-up to give the Tribe the lead once again. Sheldon's tip-in at the 9:20 mark extended the cushion to 56-52.
 
Tanksley led Hofstra with 23 points on 8-of-15 shooting to go with seven rebounds, while Green turned in a 14-point, six-rebound, five-assist stat line. Bernardi chipped in 14 points on 4-of-10 from 3-point range, while Koon's game-winner gave him 10 points. First Team All-CAA big man Rokas Gustys battled foul trouble in the second half and finished with just two points, but had a game-high 13 rebounds.
 
Hofstra advances to the CAA Championship game on Monday night at 7 p.m., and will meet co-regular season champion UNCW at Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore. The contest will be televised nationally on the NBC Sports Network with Mike Corey and Ron Thompson on the call. The Tribe, which posted its third-straight 20-win season for the first time since 1951, will await its postseason fate in two weeks.