WEST LIBERTY, West Virginia – The four-time defending NCAA Division II Atlantic Region champion West Liberty blistered the nets at better than a 70 percent clip Saturday night, running away to a 127-89 regional quarterfinal victory against No. 8 seed Livingstone (N.C.) before a capacity crowd at the ASRC.Coach Jim Crutchfield's Hilltoppers (27-3) advanced to their sixth straight regional semifinal. They will take on the winner of Saturday's late quarterfinal between No. 4 seed Fairmont State (21-10) and No. 5 seed Mercyhurst, Pa. (20-8) in Sunday's 7:30 p.m. semifinal.
Indiana, Pa. (27-6), the No. 3 seed, and No. 7 seed Slippery Rock, Pa. (21-10) will play in the 5 p.m. semifinal. Sunday's winners advance to Tuesday's regional championship game, which is set for a 7 p.m. tipoff.
"I thought we played good team ball tonight," Crutchfield said after picking up his 299th career win. "The reason we shot the ball so well is that we shared it so well which created a lot of high-percentage shots. You're not going to lose many games when you have 30 assists and shoot 70 percent from the floor."
Saturday's outcome was never in question for West Liberty as the Hilltoppers jumped out to a 65-40 halftime lead and led by as many as 42 points down the stretch to make the Blue Bears' (19-11) third consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance a brief one.
Atlantic Region Player of the Year Seger Bonifant tossed in a game-high 24 points and All-MEC guard Devin Hoehn added 21 to lead six double-figure scorers for the Hilltoppers, though neither player saw much action in the second half.
Two-time All-Region standout C.J. Hester was a perfect 6-of-6 from the floor and finished with 14 points while point guard Indiana Faithfull had 11 points and a game-high 7 assists. Brandon Smith and Brady Arnold donated 13 points each off the bench.
The Blue Bears, who had rolled through the CIAA Tournament with three straight double-digit wins, placed four players in double figures. Eric Dubose and Ty Newman led the way with 15 and 14 points, respectively.
"The things that we knew could hurt us coming in are the things that hurt us," Livingstone coach James Stinson said. "I give a lot of credit to Coach Crutchfield for the tremendous job he's done with this program. We don't play a lot of teams that shoot the ball as well as his team does and that was really the key tonight.
"(West Liberty) just kept making shot after shot and they kept making big shots. That's the sign of a well-prepared program."
The Hilltoppers came up just short of the all-time NCAA Division II Tournament scoring record of 132 points. That mark was set by Bridgeport (Conn.) in an overtime win against Stonehill (N.J.) during the 1989 tournament and tied by Central Oklahoma against Washburn (Kan.) during the 1992 event but Crutchfield's attention was already focusing on Sunday's semifinal matchup.
"No matter who we play tomorrow night, we know we're going to get a really tough opponent," Crutchfield said. "We've played Fairmont a lot and we've seen tape of Mercyhurst but I don't think you can ever see a team too much. We're going to watch both teams play tonight and then we'll be up late putting our game plan together for tomorrow."
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