Jon Battle (above) had 22 points and seven rebounds in MU's win over Michigan-Dearborn.

LIVONIA, Mich. – The Madonna University men’s basketball team completed the season sweep of the University of Michigan-Dearborn on Wednesday night with a 72-63 win inside the Activities Center. The win - MU’s 15^th of the year - establishes a new school record for wins in a season. The old record of 14 was set during the 2002-03 season. Jon Battle (Cleveland, Ohio) had 22 points to lead the Crusaders. 

The opening 20 minutes saw five ties and five lead changes as neither team got into an offensive rhythm. Down one with 11:04 left in the half, the Crusaders used a Battle layup off of a miss to take the lead back for good at 18-17. Madonna built its lead out to as many as 15 on two occasions in the half, the last coming with 53 seconds left on another Battle put back to take a 38-23 lead into halftime. 

MU built upon its lead coming out of halftime, extending it to 21 with 13:17 on the clock on a Karvens Paillere (Romulus, Mich.) triple from Charlie Henry (Canton, Mich.) to make it 51-30. The Wolves cut the lead back to single digits on a Shane Denooijer free throw to make it a nine-point game at 53-44 with 8:46 left. 

Madonna got the lead back into double digits – at 62-46 – but UMD kept coming back, slicing the lead to six with 3:39 left on another free throw. The Crusaders put the clamps down on defense, forcing a trio of UMD turnovers and making six free throws of their own to ice the game away and post the nine-point win.

Battle led all scorers with his 22, while D.J. Bridges (Canton, Mich.) added 17 of his own and Henry chipped in with 16.

The Crusaders return to action with a 3pm tipoff against Cornerstone inside the Activities Center on Saturday. William O’Sullivan will handle the play-by-play on the Crusader Internet Radio Network at 2:50pm.