Westfield, Mass. – No 4 Castleton kept it close for a while but top-seeded Westfield St. was able to pull away in the end and finish with an 88-72 victory over the Spartans in the ECAC New England Division III men's basketball semifinals at the Woodward Center on Saturday afternoon. 

Owl senior Matt Devine scored a game-high 19 points and 14 rebounds to pace five players in double figures as the team improved to 23-5 with the win. The Spartans shot 43.8 percent from the field and hit ten threes as they finished their season with a 17-13 record. It marks the fourth straight winning season for Castleton, the first time the program has achieved that feat 25 years. 

Logan White led the offense with 19 points and three steals while Mark Comstock added 14, despite being plagued with foul trouble. Dammy Mustapha chipped in with eight rebounds, two steals and two points in his final game as a Spartan. 

Westfield used its patented trapping defense to force 24 Castleton turnovers, and the Owls used their height advantage, as the 6-7 Devine, 6-6 Ryan White (17 points, 6 rebounds) and Grant Cooper (14 points, 5 rebounds) consistently scored points in the paint for the Owls. 

Westfield led 37-34 at the intermission, fueled by the strong inside play of Cooper, who had 12 first-half points, and eight each from White and Devine. 

Westfield (23-5) used a 12-5 spurt out of the intermission to grab a double-figure lead, 49-39, on a steal and layup by Jordan Santiago with 16:17 left. 

Westfield built its lead as big as 14 points on a Devine dunk with 11:42 left in regulation.  

Castleton hung tough for the next five minutes, whittling the lead back down to nine with 7:07 to play before Westfield was able to open up the final margin of victory. 

With the Spartans holding a 26-16 lead with 7:12 left in the half, Westfield went on a 15-4 run of its own spurred by a Dan Tessier three-pointer to start. The Owls grabbed their first lead of the game, 31-30 on a pair of free throws by Santiago with 1:53 left in the first half.

Notes: Comstock finished his career with 1,677 points, good for third all-time in program history ... Comstock's 110 games played tied for the program record ... Comstock and White finished the season with 552 and 533 points respectively, the highest totals since Sean Manovill finished with 553 points during the 2003-04 season … White finished the season with a school-record 107 three-point field goals ... Ackley's 114 assists is the most for a Spartan since Richard Reilly had 155 during the 2007-08 season.