CLAREMONT — Deshun McCoy (Los Angeles) scored two of his game-high 16 points on a feed from Jack Hanley (Seattle) with 5 seconds left, giving an injury-plagued Occidental College men's basketball team a 57-55 win at Pomona-Pitzer, while keeping the Tigers glimmer of hope of a SCIAC postseason alive.

Jake Klewer scored the Sagehens' second bucket of the game to give Pomona (13-9, 8-4 SCIAC) a 4-3 lead with 19:03 left in the first half, but Oxy's Kris Montoya answered with a jumper to make it 5-4 on the next possession and the Tigers held that lead for nearly 37 minutes in what head coach Brian Newhall called some "of the best basketball we've played all season."

Pomona tied the game twice late in the second half though, the first at 51 on a Danny Brown free throw with 4 minutes left, then again at 55 on a free throw by Michael Cohen with just 20 seconds to play.

But Hanley hit McCoy, on a back-door cut, who took a power dribble and elevated as if he was going to dunk the ball, then adjusted his shot for an underhanded layup to give Oxy the lead. With plenty of time left on the clock, Kyle McAndrews got off a running, three-pointer that missed just left.

"Deshun made a big time play at a time when we had to have it, then Pomona drew up a great play and got a good look at a three," Newhall said. "It was just another close SCIAC basketball game."

Conrad Liebowitz (Santa Monica) finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds, his ninth double double of the season.  Oxy as a team pounded the Sagehens on the boards, with Liebowitz' five rebounds at each end of the floor the game's best total.

Two unlikely and unsung heroes didn't wow with stats, but did play solid minutes in place of several key injured Oxy starters. Nick Wright and Nick Robinson, both started and combined for six points in 45 minutes between them, Wright in the place of senior forward Jake Copithorne (Newton Centre, Mass.), who went down with a hamstring injury against Whittier on Feb. 11, and Robinson for Sam Stapleton (Los Angeles), who played just four minutes off of the bench nursing a sore foot.

Going into the game, Robinson and Wright together were averaging just 27 minutes per game.

"Nick Wright and Nick Robinson both stepped up and played some huge minutes for us in place of some injured players," Newhall said.

The Tigers (6-6, 10-12 SCIAC) are within striking distance of the fourth and final playoff spot, trailing Redlands (12-11, 7-5 SCIAC) by one game with two to play. But with the way the rest of the SCIAC schedule shakes down, Oxy's more likely to catch the Sagehens, who they trail by two games, than the Bulldogs.

Redlands would have to lose two games — including a season finale to SCIAC-winless Caltech — in order for Oxy to advance as the fourth seed because Redlands owns the head-to-head tiebreaker after beating the Tigers twice this year.

It's not likely that Redlands will lose to Caltech (5-18, 0-12 SCIAC) and Cal Lutheran (5-7, 9-13 SCIAC).

Oxy must win out. If they do, it is also likely that Pomona will lose out, facing the conference's top two teams in Whittier College (17-6, 9-3 SCIAC) and No. 11 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (22-1, 11-1).

The caveat, Oxy must win its next two games, including beating maybe the SCIAC's best team since the 2003 Oxy squad that advanced to the NCAA Division III Elite Eight in 2003 in CMS.

The Tigers try to hang on to their playoff hopes on Thursday against CMS at Rush Gymnasium at 7 p.m.