SPOKANE, Wash. -- Saint Joseph's and coach Phil Martelli hadn't won an NCAA Tournament game since 2004, which made the magnitude of the No. 8-seeded Hawks' 78-76 nail-biter over ninth-seeded Cincinnati on Friday night all the more sweet.

Isaiah Miles' 3-pointer with 9 seconds to play proved decisive for the Hawks, but not before a dunk at the buzzer by Cincinnati's Octavius Ellis was ruled just a tick too late, sending the Hawks into celebration mode and into the Round of 32, where they'll meet top-seeded Oregon on Sunday. The Ducks drilled Holy Cross earlier in the evening.

"In a small way, I wish it hadn't ended like that. I wish it had ended with Isaiah making the three and us getting a stop. But at least from what I could see, it was the right call," Martelli said.

DeAndre' Bembry scored 25 points and Miles added 19 more as Saint Joseph's (28-7) survived a game of runs, but it was the furthest thing from easy as the Bearcats (22-11) kept coming and coming, answering every Hawks' spurt with one of their own, usually keyed by the 3-point shooting of Jacob Evans (26 points) or Farad Cobb (12 points).

"Look, I'm not cliche-ish, but if that isn't everything that this tournament's about, including the agony," Martelli said. "I know that's from 'Wide World Of Sports,' but this is the ecstasy and the agony that happened to kids 18 to 22 a long way from home. A long way from home both teams."

It could easily have gone the other way. A break-away dunk by Evans with 16 seconds to play gave Cincinnati a 76-75 lead, but was quickly answered by the Miles 3-pointer that gave the Hawks a two-point margin with nine seconds to go, setting up the wild finish that saw Ellis' jam ruled no good after the referees reviewed the video.

"I feel terrible for my team," Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said, declining comment on the final bucket ruling. "They played extremely hard. They fought back from being down early, playing with one of our best players on one leg, (Gary) Clark, from an ankle injury suffered last week. Quadri Moore played the best game of his career for us for eight minutes and then blew his ankle. ... That being said, we still had a chance to win against one of the hottest teams in the country. Kids found a way to battle back through."

The game was a battle of big shots, with both teams answering the other's best blows and neither giving the other extra opportunities as the teams combined for just 15 turnovers, nine for Cincinnati and six for the Hawks.

Evans specifically came alive for Cincinnati in the second half, hitting all three of his 3-point attempts and scoring 11 points in a crucial stretch when it looked like Saint Joseph's was primed to pull away. His offense and a run of stops by Cincinnati on defense turned a double-digit Hawks' lead into a three-point Bearcats advantage with 4:56 to play.

The Hawks quickly answered with buckets by Bembry and Miles and a falling-down 3-pointer by Brown to retake the lead, 75-71, with 2:33 to play.

Brown staked the Hawks to the game's first double-digit lead at the 12:18 mark of the second half, hitting a jumper to put Saint Joseph's ahead 61-51. A Miles put-back on the next possession extended the lead to 12. Cincinnati answered with a 15-3 run -- including two 3-pointers by Evans -- that tied the game at 66-all with 6:12 to play.

The teams played each other tight through the first half, too, with five ties and both teams leading by at least four points. Saint Joseph's twice extended its lead to eight points, but was reeled back in by a 17-6 Cincinnati run keyed by Coreontae DeBerry, who scored eight of his 15 first-half points in the stretch. Berry finished with a season-high 18. When the Bearcats' Cobb hit a 3-pointer with 2:40 to play in the half, Cincinnati had turned a 27-19 deficit into a 36-33 lead.

The Hawks answered quickly, keyed by Bembry who scored six of his 20 first-half points in the final 3 minutes of the half to send St. Joseph's into the break with a slim 41-40 lead. Bembry was more a facilitator in the second half, but Martelli believed the game marked something of a national arrival for his 6-foot-6 junior.

"There was one guy playing a game like this and everybody else was trying the best they can to play really a collegiate game," Martelli said. "He was -- he's been zeroed in. He's just been, like the look in his eye since last Saturday night, has been not that he would say it this way, but everybody in the country now knows his name."

NOTES: The game set up as a battle of contrasts, as Cincinnati is one of the most deliberate defensive teams in the country with St. Joseph's preferring to play at a faster pace on offense. The Bearcats came into the game averaging 18.3 seconds per defensive possession. Only eight teams force opponents to play at a slower pace. St. Joe's, meanwhile, averages only 16.3 seconds per offensive possession, second quickest in the Atlantic 10 conference and among the nation's quickest 25 percent of teams. ... St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli got the Hawks out of the Round of 64 for the first time since his 2004 team went to the Regional Final and fell just a game short of the Final Four.