For the first 23 or 24 minutes of Wednesday night's matchup with Manchester, Franklin men's basketball looked to be in complete control.

Then, things got interesting. The Grizzlies, though, held firm down the stretch to escape with a 76-70 triumph in their regular-season finale at the Spurlock Center.

Now locked in as the No. 5 seed in the HCAC tournament, Franklin (15-10, 11-7) will travel to fourth-seeded Mount St. Joseph for a quarterfinal game on Saturday afternoon (Feb. 21, 2 p.m.).

"The second half, Manchester did a great job of getting the ball moving side to side," Franklin coach Chris Hamilton said. "And anytime the ball moves side to side without resistance, it's going to make any good defensive team look silly. The guys did a great job of taking the feedback, making the adjustments needed to be able to disrupt their rhythm and their timing."

Franklin never trailed in the first half and got up by as many as 17 points, 52-35, when Nate Wilson found Dylan Beverly for a 3-pointer with 16:42 left in the game. The Spartans chipped away, though, using a 17-6 surge over the next six minutes to trim the gap to six and eventually getting within two on a pair of occasions, the last at 67-65 with 3:52 left.

That's when the Grizzlies put a stop to the comeback bid. Justin Harrington scored in the paint and then got a rebound at the other end, setting the stage for another Beverly 3 with 3:03 to go. The home team maintained at least a two-possession lead the rest of the way.

"I've never seen a game end before 40 minutes," Hamilton said, "so you've got to be able to go a 10-round boxing match."

The Grizzlies controlled the first half from the opening tip, which led immediately to a Beverly dunk off a Cooper Matthews lob. Franklin built its early lead to 11-2 and got up by as many as 13 before going into halftime with a 40-30 cushion.

Manchester fought back after the break but couldn't slow the Grizzly offense, which hit 29 of its 57 shots from the floor (50.9%) and piled up 22 assists on those 29 makes while turning it over just seven times. Eight of those assists came from Matthews, who also scored a team-best 21 points.

Beverly finished with 18 points, followed by Harrington with nine, Connor McNabb with eight and LeBron Bennie-Powell with seven.

With the regular season now in the rear-view mirror, the Grizzlies are ready to go about the business of defending their HCAC tournament championship.

"We're really eager to play with an attack mindset," Hamilton said. "I think that's the biggest thing ... we're going to play with an attack mindset. Rules of the road — you want to win on the road, there's no excuses. Excuses will get you beat quicker than any opponent ever will."