Feeling a bit disrespected at the start of the postseason, Franklin & Marshall's men's basketball team is playing with a chip on its shoulder.

The chip came in the form of Web site D3hoops.com declaring the Diplomats the team most likely to disappoint in the NCAA Division III tourney.

The latest foe trying to knock said chip from the Dips' shoulder was DeSales, but like the three that tried before, the Bulldogs found out such a task was not going to be easy.

The Diplomats tamed the Bulldogs, 70-60, Saturday night at a jam-packed Mayer Center.

By doing so, F&M (26-5) punched its ticket to next weekend's Final Four and its first trip to Virginia since 2000.

"We weren't supposed to make it out of the first round, now we're going to the Final Four, so we're proving it to everybody and proving to ourselves what we're capable of," F&M junior James McNally said. "It's something you can't really predict at the beginning of the season no matter how good a team you are. Now that you're here, it's unreal."

Next up for the Diplomats is a Friday date with Richard Stockton College (N.J.). The Ospreys (29-2) dismantled Farmingdale State, 103-60, in another quarterfinal Saturday night. F&M has never played Stockton in the playoffs and won the only regular-season meeting in 1995.

The other semifinal will feature Guilford (25-5) and defending national champion Washington-St. Louis (27-2). Game times have not yet been determined.

"It's unbelievable," said Clay Scovill, of F&M's fifth trip to the Final Four. "Our goal is to win it all. I don't think we're satisfied yet. I think we have to go down there to win, otherwise we don't belong there."

Georgio Milligan led the Diplomats with 21 points, including 13 in the second half. Among them, a pair of clutch buckets down the stretch as F&M was holding off a Bulldog charge. The freshman buried a 3-pointer with 2:05 left that stretched the lead to 63-54, then kissed a bucket off glass with a minute left to keep the lead at nine.

"I guess they were pretty big," Milligan reluctantly admitted. "They gave us a nice cushion that we needed."

Scovill went even further when asked about Milligan's nerves of steel.

"When he took them, I knew they were going to go in," Scovill said. "They're two huge shots for anyone to take, let alone a first-year player."

Milligan also drained a triple to open the game and the Diplomats never looked back. The game was tied 14-14 with 15:18 left in the first half, but that's when the Diplomats picked up the defensive heat and smothered the DeSales offense.

The Bulldogs went 9:39 without scoring a basket and when they did, F&M had opened up a 12-point lead and eventually took a 37-22 advantage into the break.

"I really think our team defense was the key to everything," F&M coach Glenn Robinson said. "Early in the game, they were faster up and down the floor than we were ready for. The players adjusted to the speed of the game. They stopped getting open shots."

DeSales scored only eight points over the final 15:18 of the half.

"I think they played great," DeSales coach Scott Coval said of F&M. "I don't think they played good. I don't think they played very good. I think they played great, especially at the start of the game."

While McNally led all scorers with 14 points at halftime (16 overall), the F&M defense held the Bulldogs' top two scorers, Ed Lapinski and Darnell Braswell, to a combined 12.

"If you hold four teams in the NCAA tournament in the 60s, which is what we did, that's going to get you a long way which is what we just proved," said Scovill, who had 12 points and seven rebounds. "I think the biggest improvement since the end of the season to the tournament has been our focus on defense. That's what got us here."

Braswell, who averages a team-high 17 per game, had just four but he and Lapinski (finished with game-high 23 points) sparked a second-half Bulldog charge.

A 10-0 DeSales run made it a 42-34 game with 15:11 left. But F&M answered and another Milligan trey capped an 11-4 spurt that pushed the lead back to 15.

"They took advantage of the opportunities they got and that's the game," said Braswell, who finished with 16. "They made more shots than we did. We felt we were just as good as F&M, they just had an answer for our runs."

There was one final DeSales run, however. Following the Milligan 3-pointer, the Bulldogs chipped away and eventually made it a 60-54 game with 2:38 to play.

But that's when Milligan stepped up and sank the aforementioned long ball that extended the lead back to nine, which matches the number of years it's been since the Diplomats have made it this far.

"I keep saying it's surreal," Scovill said. "You grow up watching the NCAA Tournament and the Final Four. I think it's every kid's dream to go to the Final Four."

E-mail: jschreiner@lnpnews.com