The Alma College Men's Basketball team survived a slugfest with Albion 71-68 on Saturday evening. Never one to shy away from the heroics, Sr. G Brandon Krause (Sanford/Meridian ) sunk the game winner with just five seconds left to give the Scots their second win of the season. 

With the victory, Alma improves to 2-11 (1-1 MIAA) on the year while the host Britons drop to 7-6 overall with a 1-1 mark in conference play.

"Obviously a huge road conference win but even bigger for this team to finally win a close game," remarked Scots Head Coach Sam Hargraves. "We have been so close. We kind of blew a lead again, and much of the credit for that goes to Albion, but we did make some great plays in crunch time. We still have to continue to get tougher and execute for 40 minutes, but our defensive effort overall was solid."

Sr. F  Isiah Law (Grand Haven/Grand Haven) put the Scots on the board first with a jumper at 19:15 - this proved to be the first basket of many for the Grand Haven native. Albion would jump out to a 13-6 lead at 11:54 before another jumper and a free throw by Law cut the deficit to 13-11. Both teams would continue exchanging blows in the first half before Albion strung together a 5-0 run to take the 26-22 lead at 3:41.

A triple by Fr. G Chase Fairchild (Rockford/Rockford) would cut the deficit to one (28-27), before Krause knocked down a jumper with just 56 seconds to go to put Alma up 29-28. Law closed out the half by draining a jumper from beyond the arc and the Scots took the 32-29 lead into the locker room.

Led by Law's 15 points, Alma shot 44.4% from the floor in the first half and 4-of-13 from deep.

Albion would take the led back at 18:19 with a lay up before Law answered back with back-to-back jumpers to give the Scots the 38-35 lead at 17:21.  Krause capped off an 8-0 Alma run with a jump shot to extend the lead to 42-35 with just over 16 minutes remaining. A lay up from Sr. F Kyle Aho (Gwinn/Gwinn) stretched the Scots lead to 11 (50-39) at 13:01. 

The Britons took the hit and quickly responded with 10-0 run to cut the Alma lead to a single point at 50-49. The teams continued to exchange the lead before back-to-back jumpers by Law and So. F DJ Beckman (Shelby/Shelby) gave Alma the 67-62 advantage with under two minutes left in regulation.

With the Scots clinging to a three-point cushion late, Albion drained a triple with just 25 seconds to tie the score at 69-69. Hargraves used his final two timeouts to craft the play that turned out to be the game winner. With just five seconds left to go, Krause knocked down a jumper to give the Scots the 71-69 victory on the road. 

Four Scots finished in double digits led by Law's game-high 23 points (10-of-14). Krause posted 15 points and five assists while So. G Scott Nikodemski (Rockford/Rockford) tallied 14 points. Despite battling foul trouble for a majority of the evening, Beckman finished with 11 points in the victory.

Two Britons finished with a double double Saturday, as Jordan Herron scored 11 points and grabbed 10 boards while Carter Elliot finished with 10 points and 11 rebounds.

Alma shot 27-of-55 (49.1%) from the floor and 6-of-17 (35.3%) from deep. Despite the victory, the Scots were out-rebounded 42-32 and committed 11 turnovers compared to eight by Albion.

Alma is at Olivet on Wednesday, January 15, for a game set to tip off at 8:00 p.m.