Ten local college players will be continuing their basketball seasons in the NCAA Division III men’s and women’s tournaments after their teams won conference championship games on Saturday.
Here’s a look at all of them:
Damian Grant, Wilby (Albertus Magnus College)
The Falcons hosted the University of Saint Joseph in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference Tournament final on Saturday. The Blue Jays may have been a sentimental favorite in the state with Jim Calhoun as their head coach, but it was the hosts that earned the NCAA tournament berth. Albertus defeated USJ 81-77, and Grant was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.
All Grant did was tally 21 points, eight rebounds, one steal and one blocked shot in 29 minutes of action. He shot 9-of-13 from the floor.
Simply put, Grant came up huge in the final 3:11 for Albertus. Grant’s offensive rebound led to a Jahmeriakah Green-Younger three-point play and a 75-70 Falcon lead with 3:05 to go.
USJ pulled within a point, 75-74, with 1:38 to go. Albertus looked to Grant, and he connected for a layup off a Ryan Pittman assist for a 77-74 lead with 1:18 to play. On the next possession, Grant rebounded a Falcon miss and scored to give his team a 79-74 lead with 22 seconds remaining.
Matt Finke, Wolcott (Mitchell College)
What would Finke and the Mariners do for an encore following Finke’s overtime buzzer-beater in the semifinal round? Another overtime game, this time at home in the final against Newbury College.
Mitchell outlasted Newbury 77-69 in overtime to secure the NCAA tournament berth. Finke played 31 minutes and scored nine points on 3-of-10 shooting (2-of-7 on 3-pointers). He had three assists, a rebound and a steal.
Nyzair Rountree and Charles McClain
Holy Cross and Chase Collegiate (Keene State College)
The Owls defended their home court as the Little East Conference’s top tournament seed and defeated Eastern Connecticut State University 72-69.
Rountree played 23 minutes and scored nine points on an efficient 4-of-5 shooting day from the field. He filled up the stat sheet with five rebounds, two assists, one steal and one blocked shot.
McClain played in the 107-80 LEC semifinal win over Western Connecticut State University on Friday. He scored two points to go along with one rebound, one assist and one steal in six minutes.
McClain is a senior on the Owl roster. He has played in 23 games made one start this season.
Keene State punched a ticket to the NCAA tournament with the win over ECSU.
NOTE: McClain was erroneously omitted from an earlier version of this story and has since been added.
Jaekwon Spencer, Bristol Central (Nichols College)
The Bison defended their homecourt with a 105-90 victory over Gordon College in the Commonwealth Coast Conference final. Spencer played seven minutes and tallied three points, two rebounds, two steals and one assist.
The freshman came up big in Nichols’ 87-79 semifinal win over Western New England University on Thursday. Spencer tallied a double-double of 15 points and 10 rebounds off of the bench, providing a spark for the Bison in their comeback victory.
With the win over Gordon, Nichols earned a berth in the NCAA tournament.
Caitlin Cipriano, Holy Cross (Emmanuel College)
The second-seeded Saints needed overtime to down top-seeded St. Joseph’s College (Maine) 65-64 in the GNAC final. Cipriano started for Emmanuel and played 37 minutes. Cipriano tallied six points, six rebounds and four assists.
Cipriano connected on a foul shot with 1:49 to play to put the Saints ahead 63-60. She also had a rebound during the fourth quarter. Emmanuel started the fourth quarter down four points, then cut the deficit to two points. Cipriano came up with a rebound on the next possession to keep the margin at two points.
Eastern Connecticut State’s four locals are going dancing
There are too many locals to name to put in one headline, but they are all going dancing with the Warriors after a 77-72 overtime road win over UMass-Dartmouth.
The locals are: Lizzy Cretella (St. Paul), Diana Wnuk (Bristol Eastern), Aiyana Ward (Holy Cross) and Raven Cody (Wolcott). All four can be seen in the team postgame celebration photo on the school’s athletics website.
Cretella was the lone local to see playing time in the final. She scored one point and pulled down three rebounds in nine minutes for ECSU. The Warriors clinched a spot in the NCAA tournament with the victory.
Cretella and Ward each saw time on the floor in the 93-58 semifinal win over the University of Southern Maine on Friday, also at UMass-Dartmouth.
Cretella played 17 minutes and scored 11 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the floor. She made her only three-point attempt, knocked down both of her foul shots, and added four rebounds, four assists and a steal.
Ward played 14 minutes and scored six points on a perfect 3-of-3 from the floor. She also had three rebounds and an assist.
Selection shows
Want to know where the locals will be headed for their first round NCAA games? The Division III men’s basketball selections will be announced on Monday at 1 p.m. on the web at ncaa.com. The Division III women’s basketball selections will be announced on Monday at 2:30 p.m. on the web at ncaa.com, though the site lists that time as tentative. You may want to check it out earlier in the day on Monday to confirm that time.
Statistics, headshot photos and information compiled from the team website of each athlete.
Charles McClain from Chase Collegiate is a player on Keene State as well.