SMITHFIELD — Embarrassed by its recent loss to previously winless New Jersey Tech, Bryant took out its frustration on Long Island yesterday, winning in the final seconds, 57-55. The victory also avenged a 15-point loss to the Blackbirds earlier this season.

“This is huge,” Bryant’s leading scorer, Cecil Gresham (18 points, 4 rebounds), said. “After us losing to NJIT, we were all over the news, on the Today show, SportsCenter, so this is huge, getting this win. If we lost this game, I don’t know what would happen.”

The victory wasn’t easy. The game wasn’t decided until the final buzzer.

Long Island overcame a 17-point halftime deficit and tied the game at 55-55 with 19 seconds left when Ron Manigault (10 points, 12 rebounds) hauled in an offensive rebound and put it back up for two. He was fouled on the shot and he sank the free throw to stun the home crowd.

Bryant called a timeout with eight seconds left to draw up the game-winning shot. With everyone in the building thinking the ball was going to Gresham, Bryant pulled out a surprise.

“I just said, ‘Get Adam Parzych the ball,’ ” Gresham said he told his teammates during the timeout. “They weren’t expecting him to get the ball. He doesn’t get a lot of playing time but he is always ready to play every game.”

Bryant got Parzych (12 points, 3 assists) the ball and he dribbled into the lane, drawing three defenders to him with five seconds left.

When the defenders converged on him, Parzych made a perfect bounce pass to Andrew Lyell (7 points, 5 rebounds), who was posted up all alone on the right block underneath the basket. Lyell banked in the game-winning shot with three seconds left.

Jaytornah Wisseh (14 points) heaved up a desperation 3-pointer from half court as time ran out but it missed its mark, and the Bulldogs stormed the court in celebration.

“Parzych played really well in practice and I told him the other day that I was going to try to get him some more playing time and he stepped up huge for us,” Bryant coach Tim O’Shea said. “He played with a lot of heart and a lot of toughness, and I was really happy to see him play well because he is one of our hardest workers. With that performance, he’s clearly going to be a big part of what we do the rest of the year.”

After Bryant had its best first half of the season, Long Island came out of the locker room fired up for the second half. The Blackbirds picked up their intensity on their man-to-man defense, pressed, and quickly closed Bryant’s 34-17 advantage to 38-31 with a 14-4 run over the opening four minutes.

Then the Blackbirds switched to a 2-3 zone and the Bulldogs settled for jump shots instead of driving to the basket like they did in the first half. Bryant was cold from the outside, and Long Island inched closer and closer to Bryant’s lead until the Blackbirds tied the game up in the final minute.

“We got stagnant against the zone,” O’Shea said. Bryant had its best first half of the season, which helped carry them to their fourth victory of the season.

The Bulldogs scored a season-high 34 points in the first half while knocking down a first-half season-best 55.6 percent of its shots (13-for-23) to take a 17-point lead into the locker room at halftime.

“That was the best first half of basketball that we played all year, no doubt about it,” O’Shea said. “We had good ball movement and execution.”

O’Shea hopes that Bryant can shock more teams before the season is over.

“Hopefully there will be some more [wins] in there,” O’Shea said. “I don’t think anybody thought that we could beat LIU, and to be able to pull that off is great, so I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

roblee@projo.com