An hour before Saturday night’s tip-off, Eastern’s final preseason opponent, a traveling exhibition team, arrived at Lantz Arena.

Three hours later, the CAP’s Basketball Academy All-Stars escaped with a 79-76 win.

On Monday, some of those All-Stars will report back to work. Not to the weight room building muscle mass or quickness, not to the gym honing their jump shots, but to work.

Jason Burke and Tavaras Hardy, two Northwestern graduates, travel with the CAP’s team scrimmaging college teams for fun. Burke is an aspiring lawyer, now serving as a paralegal at Winston and Strawn in downtown Chicago. Hardy, who played professionally in Europe last year, is now a financial analyst for Bank One.

And yet, for the first 10 minutes Saturday, it was the Panthers who outsmarted the All-Stars. The eight-person All-Star squad was created so an agency firm, International Sports Management, could develop game tape of its clients and market them to professional teams.

Five different players netted field goals as the Panthers sprinted to a 17-4 lead.

“Boy, the first 10 minutes looked good, didn’t they?” coach Rick Samuels said.

The remaining 30 minutes, however, revealed the Panthers lack of experience and interior girth. The Panthers turned the ball over 27 times and although they kept pace with the All-Stars in points in the paint, 38 to 32, the number is deceiving because most of the Panthers interior baskets resulted from breakaway layups and offensive rebounds.

The All-Stars utilized beefy 6-foot-8 Tony Graves many times with his back to the basket like the Los Angeles Lakers use Shaquille O’Neal. Graves, who scored 19 points, was a former center at Southwest Missouri State University and played on the 1999 Bears squad, who lost to Duke in the Sweet 16.

The Panthers have seven players listed more than 6-feet-6, but the team’s taller players are lighter in weight. The team’s starting center on Saturday, 6-feet-8 Jesse Mackinson, weights 210 pounds and scored the majority of his 21 points on midrange jumpers. The 6-foot-10 Kevin Lowe, who saw limited action, like Mackson, is also listed at 210 pounds.

Eastern’s one sizable player, 6-foot-9, 290 pound Aaron Harrison, a junior college transfer from Triton Community College, was on crutches and in street clothes Saturday. He has not yet practiced with the team, Samuels said.

Nonetheless, the Panthers relied on relentless hustle and scrappiness actually out-rebounding the All-Stars, 32-29. The Panthers also held the All-Stars to five offensive rebounds, well under the permissible number of 10, which Samuels said was the pregame goal.

When the lack of size was suggested as a possible problem for the regular season, which starts Nov. 22, at Northern Illinois, the players disagreed.

“Although our post game wasn’t there tonight, it will be in the future,” sophomore guard Josh Gomes said.

The Panthers started three guards – sophomores Gomes and Jake Sinclair and junior Derik Hollyfield – and two postmen, seniors David Roos and Mackinson. The lineup was tinkered with throughout the game. The Panthers mixed their typical man-to-man defense with a trapping 2-3 zone that confused the All-Stars.

“We played everybody that needs to get game experience,” Samuels said. “Now, we need to work on getting the right combinations on the floor.”

After falling behind early, the All-Stars countered with a 12-0 run bringing the Panther lead to 17-16 at the 9:06 mark of the first half. Four and a half minutes later, a layup by Hardy, the accountant, pushed the All-Stars ahead for the first time, 27-25.

In the second half, the Panthers trailed by as much as nine points, 65-56 with 9:08 left. Eastern chipped away at the lead over the next eight minutes, scoring on free throws and offensive rebound putbacks.

A Gomes three-pointer from the right wing at 1:37 put Eastern ahead, 75 to 74, for the first time in 10 minutes. The nothing-but-net jumper aroused the crowd of 643 to its loudest decibel level all game. The Panthers then retained possession still up one with a minute remaining, but instead of draining the game clock, took an errant shot.

The All-Stars then raced down the floor and manufactured a lay up that gave them a 76-75 lead. Roos was fouled with 43 seconds, and the senior nailed one of the two free throws to bring the game to a tie.

The All-Stars held the ball until 15 seconds and then Damon Frierson attacked the basket. His dribble was slapped away but the ball deflected back to him, resulting in an uncontested reverse lay up. The Panthers hurried the ball down the court and gave it to Gomes, who once again had a chance to give Eastern the lead via a three-point shot from the right wing.

“The defender came at me a lot closer than I thought it was,” said Gomes, who missed the shot long. “But I thought it was going in.” The miss in the exhibition game was good practice for the future, he went on to say, “The more shots like that I take, the more comfortable I will feel.”

The All-Stars added one free throw to the final score. A full-court pass to Roos bobbled past a few All-Stars defenders, but he could not pick up the loose ball before time expired.

“We have talent,” Samuels said, “but our guys aren’t experienced. They’re new to the system and we’re still trying to develop chemistry.”

Chemistry is not something the All-Stars necessarily have to worry about. The team’s top player flied out Saturday morning after signing a contract with the Dakota Wizards, a team in the Continental Basketball Association, said Dave Maravilla, director of the sports agency that owns the team. Eastern was the third stop of four games for the All-Stars, who previously lost to Valparaiso University and Northwestern, and will travel to Ohio University next week.

International Sports Management represents 24 professional basketball players in Europe and three in the NBA, such as the New Orleans Hornets’ David Wesley and the Dallas Mavericks’ Adrian Griffin.

And, for now, one lawyer and one accountant.

Burke, the paralegal, says Northwestern, UCLA, USC and the University of Texas at Austin are his top four choices for law school. Basketball, for him, truly is only a game.

“We’ve grown up our whole lives playing ball, so some of us are taking this chance just to get back in shape,” said Burke, who hit four three-pointers. “I definitely have a different perspective (of basketball). Last year, my senior year, a loss would have really sunk in hard. Now, I’m just having fun, fun again like it was the fifth grade.”