ATLANTA, Ga. - Sophomore Jack Plesser scored a game-high 27 points, including the go-ahead bucket with three seconds left in regulation, as the Union College men's basketball team got back into the win column with a 73-71 victory over LaGrange College on day one of the Emory Holiday Classic, held on Sunday afternoon at Emory's Woodruff P.E. Center.

Plesser cracked the 20-point mark for the fifth time this season for Union (4-5), netting a game-high 27 points on 9-of-16 shooting from the field and an 8-of-8 mark from the free-throw line. Classmate Tanner Tedesco chipped in 13 points, eight assists and six rebounds, while classmates Matthew Garside and Jaden Jauregui added 14 and 12 points, respectively.

Micah McAllister scored a team-leading 25 points and Jace Harrell added 11 points for LaGrange (4-7).

The teams remained within one possession of each other for almost the entirety of the second half, with neither side leading by more than five points. The lead changed hands on each of the first four possessions of the half, after which LaGrange led for almost 10 minutes until Union assumed the advantage for the last time with 6:52 left after a pair of free throws by Garside to take a 61-60 lead. A Plesser jumper finished off an 8-0 run and gave the Garnet Chargers a 65-60 edge with 5:39 on the clock; however, LaGrange came back to tie the score on three occasions, the last coming after a pair of McAllister freebies with 1:43 remaining. After missed chances for both teams, Garside forced a steal to give Union one last possession and then fed Plesser for the go-ahead layup that gave the Garnet Chargers the victory.

Union led by as many as 11 points in the opening half, coming with 6:00 left after a Jauregui layup made the score 30-19 in favor of the Garnet Chargers. However, the Panthers came back with an 18-2 run that turned the deficit into a five-point lead with under two minutes remaining, and LaGrange took a 39-38 lead into halftime to set the stage for a back-and-forth final frame.

Union finished the game shooting 43.9 percent (25 of 57) from the field and also was nearly perfect from the free-throw line, hitting 18-of-19 (94.7 percent), while LaGrange finished the game shooting 34.4 percent (22 of 64) from the field. The Garnet Chargers were also very opportunistic, turning 12 LaGrange turnovers into 23 points.

Union will return to action tomorrow, when the Garnet Chargers look to knock off the nation's top-ranked team, Emory University, at 4 p.m.