The men's basketball team began another postseason journey this weekend with a 97-65 throttling of Little Three rival Wesleyan University in the first round of the NESCAC Tournament. Tri-captain John Donovan '04 earned NESCAC Player of the Week honors by pacing the home team with 21 points on 7-for-12 shooting and leading Amherst to its third triumph over Wesleyan this year. The third-seeded Jeffs continue their postseason run this weekend in Williamstown, where they will likely have the opportunity to avenge both of their regular-season losses. Amherst faces the second-seeded Trinity College Bantams, who bested the Jeffs by a score of 68-66 back on Feb. 7, in the NESCAC semifinals on Saturday. If the Jeffs prevail, they will likely face top-seeded Williams College in the Championship game for the second consecutive year.

Amherst took control early against Wesleyan, building up a double-digit lead in the first half that grew to as many as 22 points when junior point guard Ray Corrigan made a lay-up just before the buzzer sent the teams to their respective locker rooms.

Despite possessing a 22-point lead, Head Coach Dave Hixon '75 and company knew that the game was far from won. Just a week earlier, the Jeffs led the Cardinals by 24 points at the half only to barely hang on for a 80-77 victory. This time however, Amherst was not about to give Wesleyan a reprieve.

The Jeffs started the second half on a small run and kept the Cardinals at a comfortable distance for the rest of the game. Hixon was able to clear his bench at game's end as his team cruised to an easy first-round win.

"Going into the second half this weekend we were a lot more focused than we were last time, which can pretty much be attributed to the memory of seeing a 24-point lead vanish the way it did at Wesleyan," said Donovan. "We knew what their scorers were capable of doing in a short period of time if left unchecked and what could potentially happen if we let up on our intensity, so we made it a point to not make that mistake again."

Amherst's 97 points are the most any team has scored in a NESCAC Tournament game. John Bedford had 19 points for Amherst off the bench, while tri-captain Adam Harper '04 and Corrigan scored 10 points apiece. Wesleyan's Kanem Johnson, the NESCAC's leading scorer, finished with a game-high 26 points, but Johnson's partner in crime, Keala Mills, managed only five points on the afternoon due in large part to the superior defense of Harper. Mills had an average of 33 points per game in his two previous engagements this year with Amherst.

The field for the NCAA Tournament will be announced this Sunday. While the Jeffs may have already done enough this year to earn an at-large bid, they will not want to leave anything to chance with the competitiveness of Div. III this season. Undoubtedly, Trinity and Williams feel the same, so this weekend's action at Chandler Gymnasium is bound to be an excellent showcase for NESCAC basketball.