Downloadable photo gallery courtesty of Cris Yarborough

WILLIMANTIC, Conn. – Senior guard Mike Garrow (Terryville) scored on an inside basket on a lob pass from junior forward Brandon Yarborough (Stamford) to wipe out Plymouth State University's only lead of the game with 65 seconds left as the Eastern Connecticut State University men's basketball team withstood the Panthers' challenge for a 59-56 victory in a Little East Conference men's basketball game Saturday afternoon at Francis E. Geissler Gymnasium.

At right: Mike Garrow is guarded by Plymouth State freshman Curtis Arsenault in the first half of Saturday's 59-56 Eastern win. (Photo by Cris Yarborough).

With its seventh straight win, Eastern (15-4, 9-0 Little East) remains two games ahead of Rhode Island College in the conference, with five regular-season conference games left. The defending champion Anchormen slipped past homestanding Massachusetts Boston, 70-65, Saturday.

Trailing by 14 points late in the first half and by 11 at the break, Plymouth (10-9, 4-5 Little East) commited only three second-half turnovers and shot just under 50 percent from the floor to get back into contention. Held to just three first-half points, senior guard Petey Skevas scored 11 second-half points for the Panthers – mostly on free throws and drives to the basket – as the Panthers rallied.

Trailing by five with just over three minutes left, Plymouth scored six points in a row – two on free throws by Skevas and consecutive buckets off steals by junior guard Alex Burt (Dover, NH) and junior guard Shomari Morgan  – to take its only lead of the game, 56-55, with 1:23 left.

On Eastern's next possession, Yarborough lobbed an inside pass to Garrow, who grabbed the ball in traffic and layed it in with 1:05 left. After a timeout, Plymouth commited only its third turnover of the half but it was a costly one, and Garrow followed by scoring on a drive from the left side with three seconds left on the shot clock to make it 59-56 with 16.4 seconds left.

Following a timeout, the Panthers drove the length of the floor and missed consecutive game-tying three-point field goals in the final seconds – their only three-point field goal tries of the second half.

Led by sophomore guard Trachone Preston (Enfield), Eastern used a 12-2 run in the first half to break a tie and move out to a ten-point, 16-6 lead with 8:34 left. Plymouth shot just 20.0 percent from the floor in the half and Preston sparked the run with nine points on two field goals and four free throws.

Garrow  led both teams with 25 points -- reaching that number for the third time this year -- on 9-of-15 field goals and 7-of-8 free throws, with Preston  adding 13 points – 11 in the first half to help the Warriors move out to their double-digit lead. Garrow now shows a team-best free-throw shooting mark of 84.5 percent -- third-highest in the conference.

In foul trouble most of the game, freshman forward Hugh Lindo (Enfield) came off the bench for eight rebounds and five points in 15 minutes. Making his first career start in place of senior guard Brian Salzillo (North Haven), sophomore guard Kevin Leumene (Stamford) had eight points and four rebounds in a career-high 33 minutes. Salzillo, the conference's leading scorer and second-ranked three-point shooter in Division III, missed his first game of the year due to illness.

Ranked third in the LEC in free throw shooting, Eastern was 20-of-25 from the stripe, while Plymouth converted 18-of-21 freebies  despite entering play ranked sixth that department among eight team.

Skevas and sophomore forward Uche Nwokeji each had 14 points for Plymouth, which falls from a tie for fourth place into a tie for fifth place in the conference after failing to win as many as two in a row for the first time since early December. Junior guard Shomari Morgan added ten points for the Panthers and Nwokeji grabbed a team-high six rebounds. The teams are ranked 1-2 in the conference in rebounding margin, and Plymouth came away with a +2 edge over the LEC leaders.

In the two-game series, Eastern limited Plymouth an average of only 52.5 points. Saturday, Plymouth leader scorer Curtis Arsenault scored six of his eight points from the foul line, managing just one field goal on seven attempts from the floor.

The win was the ninth straight in the series for Eastern over Plymouth and completes a regular-season sweep. On Jan. 4, the Warriors won, 61-49, behind Salzillo's game-high 20 points.

Eastern visits Wesleyan University Tuesday at 7 p.m.