RICHMOND, Va. -- Cam Long didn't have to be asked twice.
Told by his teammates that they needed him to have an impact in their Colonial Athletic Association tournament semifinal against Towson, Long took charge with three 3-pointers and two key assists in the last eight minutes to lift the Patriots to a 56-48 victory on Sunday.
The second-seeded Patriots (22-9) will face top-seeded Virginia Commonwealth on Monday night with the winner likely claiming the league's only NCAA tournament berth. It will be the third consecutive appearance for George Mason in the CAA title game. The Patriots won it last year.
"Even though we have a lot of senior leadership, even the seniors told me, 'Cam, you have to step up for the team. We need you to be a leader for the team,"' Long said after scoring 14 points with six rebounds and five assists. "That gave me a lot of confidence."
The Tigers led for most of the second half after scoring the first six points.
Towson's lead was 43-37 with 9 minutes left before Darryl Monroe scored inside and Long hit back-to-back 3-pointers. Long's second 3 gave the Patriots a 45-43 lead with 7:07 left.
After Calvin Lee's putback tied it, Dre Smith hit back-to-back layups -- the second on a feed from Long -- to give George Mason a 49-45 advantage. Thornton then hit a 3-pointer to pull the Tigers within one, but Long fed Louis Birdsong for another basket, and punctuated his big finish in crunch time with a long 3-pointer as the shot clock ran down with 25 seconds left.
Towson never scored again after Thornton's 3-pointer with 4 minutes to play.
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Monroe led the Patriots with 15 points and Dre Smith had 13.
"Some nights somebody has to step up and make an unexpected play," Patriots coach Jim Larranaga said. "It can't all be scripted. If it was scripted, and we were the ones writing the script, we would have tried to win the game by 20 and not have it go down to the wire."
The 11th-seeded Tigers (12-22), the lowest seed to make it to the CAA tournament semifinals, fell to 0-15 against George Mason since 2002, when Towson joined the conference.
Josh Thornton led Towson with 15 points and Troy Franklin had 10, but the Tigers' surprising run ended after victories against sixth-seeded Drexel and No. 3 Northeastern.
"As I told the guys, they were kind of the talk of the tournament, and they should be proud of that," Tigers coach Pat Kennedy said.
Towson's victories in the first and quarterfinal rounds marked only the third time all season they won consecutive games.
The Patriots led 29-26 at the end of the first half, which closed with an action-packed 16 seconds. Towson's Robert Nwankwo stole the ball and took a feed from Rocky Coleman for an alley-oop dunk with 16 seconds to play in the half. But the Patriots ran the clock down before Smith made a 3rd 3-pointer at the buzzer, capping a 7-2 run to end the half.
