STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (Dec. 7) -- The Thiel College men's basketball team dropped a 58-54 nail bitter with Franciscan University Saturday night at Finnegan Fieldhouse in a Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC) dual. 

The Tomcats fall to 4-5 overall and 3-3 in PAC play while the Barons rise to 6-3 on the year and 2-3 in league play.

Thiel trailed 51-46 with less than 5 minutes to play before a pair of free throws each from Marlon Ellerbee (Temple Hills, Md./Oxon Hill) and Gabriel Gonzalez (Merida, Venezuela/Southwest Miami) made it 51-50 with 4:42 left and kick-started an 8-0 run. Coming out of the under-4 media timeout. Ellerbee blocked a Barons' 3-point attempt, corralled the rebound and tallied a fast-break layup to give the Tomcats the lead. Two free throws from Rob Thomas (Pittsburgh, Pa./Penn Hills) capped the spurt and made it 54-51 with 2:50 remaining. 

The home side closed the game on a 7-0 run by going 7-of-8 at the free-throw line in the final 2:21 to steal the 4-point win.

Thomas, coming off a career-best performance against Westminster Wednesday, posted 12 points on 4-of-13 from the field and 4-of-4 at the line while collecting a career-best eight rebounds and blocking a team-high-tying two shots.

Ellerbee added 10 points on 3-of-7 from the field and 4-of-6 at the line while pulling down six boards and dishing out a game-high-tying four assists. Gonzalez added 2 points and had five rebounds in reserve. 

The two sides were tied at 30 at the 16:24 mark of the second half before an Ellerbee layup followed by a Mike Brown (Clinton, Md./Gwynn Park) 3-pointer and a Khamari Accursio-Harris (Jupiter, Fla./Jupiter) layup gave Thiel a 37-30 edge with 14:28 left to play.

Brown posted a team- and season-best 15 points on 5-of-13 shooting, 3-of-6 from deep and 2-of-2 at the line while fetching four rebounds. Accursio-Harris contributed 7 points on 3-of-5 and had six rebounds, two blocks, two assists and one steal. 

Thiel started the contest on an 11-0 run over the first 4:18 as Brown had 5 points while Accursio-Harris, Thomas and Logan Lentz (Greenville, Pa./Greenville) had 2 points each during the stretch. Lentz finished with 5 points and four boards in his first collegiate start.

As a team, Thiel went 15-of-19 (78.9%) at the line, including 11-of-13 in the second half. The Barons went 17-of-26 (65.4%) from the charity stripe for the game.

The home side held the edge in points of turnovers (21-14) while the visitors outpaced the Barons in second-chance points (12-5). 

Men's basketball returns to action next Tuesday for a road PAC matchup with Bethany College at 7:30 p.m.