By Ed Morrone

Antoine Agudio becamethe first sophomore in school history to reach the 1,000-point plateau in Monday night's second round NIT road win over Saint Joseph's, but the biggest play he made didn't involve any of his 24 points.

Rather, Agudio fed senior forward Aurimas Kieza a beautiful pass that led to an open lay-up, giving the Pride the lead for good in its 77-75 overtime win at Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse in Philadelphia.

The hard fought, back-and-forth slugfest between the two teams came out in the Pride's favor, which allowed the team to live to see another postseason game. The win also avenged last season's 53-44 NIT opening round loss to the Hawks.

The Pride may not be receiving as much attention as George Mason's Sweet 16, but it is playing like a team that fiercely wants to win every game it has left. The bitterness over being left out of the Dance remains, but the Blue & Gold has now turned that into a motivation factor. "We know we should have been in the NCAA tournament," Agudio said. "We use it a little bit as motivation. Believe me, we're aware of it. Right now, we just want to win an NIT championship."

For the second straight year, St. Joe's almost prevented that from happening. The Pride controlled most of the game, but the Hawks, backed by the always-imposing home crowd at Alumni, slowly climbed back into it. The Hawks took their first lead since the score was 8-7 on an Abdulai Jalloh (21 points, eight rebounds) lay-up that made it 52-50 with 9:22 to go, but the Pride used a quick 10-3 spurt to go back up, 60-55. St. Joe's rallied back to tie it at 62, but Loren Stokes (22 points) buried a three-pointer to beat the shot clock in a shot that appeared to have the game won.

However, Kieza made a horrible mistake in fouling Jalloh on a three with 5.2 seconds left in regulation. Jalloh calmly sank all three shots to force overtime. Not wanting his gaffe to signal the end of his career, Kieza made up for it in overtime, scoring four points and the go-ahead basket paired with a key defensive stop in the final seconds to preserve his and the rest of the Pride's season.

"You never want it to end, certainly not that way," Kieza said. "We didn't want to lose like that." Added head coach Tom Pecora: "It was a tough game for our seniors. Neither played very well, so I'm thrilled theyget to play again."

If Agudio and Kieza keep coming up big, the Pride could be playing into next week.