Category: NEC

The Most Dynamic Playmakers of the NEC

When Darian Anderson’s colliegiate career ended due to foot surgery on Monday, it robbed the Northeast Conference of one’s of its best guards. Anderson was instrumental, check that essential, in guiding Fairleigh Dickinson to their first NCAA tournament berth in more than a decade. His uncanny ability to create offense for himself and his teammates, as well as make clutch shot after clutch shot, was a critical reason the 2015-16 Knights made it to Dayton. Continue reading “The Most Dynamic Playmakers of the NEC” →

Are LIU Brooklyn and Central Connecticut Still NEC Contenders?

Yesterday, we handicapped Sacred Heart and Bryant’s chances of climbing out of the early holes they dug themselves. Today, Nelson Castillo and Ryan Peters investigate the other two 1-3 teams, LIU Brooklyn and Central Connecticut. Continue reading “Are LIU Brooklyn and Central Connecticut Still NEC Contenders?” →

Can Sacred Heart and Bryant Pull Themselves Out of the NEC Cellar?

Nearly a quarter of the NEC season has been completed, so I’d like to go through the exercise of deciphering which 1-3 teams are in trouble and which could climb out of their early hole. With four programs off to difficult starts, I’d like to begin by assessing Sacred Heart and Bryant. Continue reading “Can Sacred Heart and Bryant Pull Themselves Out of the NEC Cellar?” →

The Best NEC Players After Non-Conference Play

Some predictions regarding the Northeast Conference this season have occurred as expected: Saint Francis looks like a favorite, Junior Robinson and Keith Braxton are currently NEC POY frontrunners and LIU Brooklyn is playing fast. For the past seven weeks, however, a majority of events have not been as predictable. Continue reading “The Best NEC Players After Non-Conference Play” →

Reassessing the NEC After the Non-Conference Slate

With the non-conference season now in the books, now is as good a time as ever to break down where each Northeast Conference team stands. If you go by Ken Pomeroy, the current projected standings versus the ones back in October have fluctuated quite a bit. Continue reading “Reassessing the NEC After the Non-Conference Slate” →

NEC Weekly Update – Parity Reigns Supreme

Nearly a month has been logged into the 2017-18 season and we’re starting to accumulate enough data to get a general feel as to where most NEC teams currently stand. With a lot of programs moving up in KenPom’s rankings (especially the perceived bottom tier), it most definitely will be a crap shoot come January. Let’s dive into some trends that are noteworthy within the league. Continue reading “NEC Weekly Update – Parity Reigns Supreme” →

LIU Brooklyn gets by Stony Brook for second straight win

In a matchup of two three-win teams thus far, Stony Brook traveled west on the dreaded Long Island Expressway Monday night to Downtown Brooklyn to visit the Steinberg Wellness Center for the first time ever to play LIU Brooklyn in unexpectedly just the second-ever meeting between the two area schools.

In what turned out to be a tight affair pretty much throughout, LIU Brooklyn came away with a 75-71 victory behind the combination of Joel Hernandez, Raiquan Clark and a rather surprising career-high performance from Julius van Sauers. The three players combined for 59 out of LIU’s 75 points. Continue reading “LIU Brooklyn gets by Stony Brook for second straight win” →

Five thoughts on NJIT-LIU Brooklyn and Hartford-LIU Brooklyn in the last 72 hours

In the previous 72 hours, I embarked on a two games in three days journey following LIU Brooklyn men’s basketball as they returned back to the tri-state area after playing their previous four games in Jamaica (the Caribbean island, not Queens) and up in the New England area at UMass-Lowell and Brown where they went just 1-3 and entered the week with a bit of a disappointing 2-5 record. Continue reading “Five thoughts on NJIT-LIU Brooklyn and Hartford-LIU Brooklyn in the last 72 hours” →

Twenty Years Ago, A Record-Shattering Blowout Win Altered The Course Of LIU Basketball

Yesterday, you saw something in college basketball you probably never seen before. In the Minnesota-Alabama game at the Barclays Center, Alabama played several minutes of the second half with just three players as their entire bench got ejected for coming on to the court during an altercation. The crazy thing was, they nearly pulled off the comebacks of all-time comebacks with just three guys!

The reason why I bring that up is that today marks the twentieth anniversary of Medgar Evers-Long Island (as they were known back then before they became better known as LIU Brooklyn) game. Another crazy game in the annals of college basketball. That was the game in which the Blackbirds won by 117 points. Yes, you read correctly, 1-1-7. Twenty years later, it is still an NCAA record for largest margin of victory.

I wrote this piece for my old blog, Blackbirds Hoops Journal, five years ago on the fifteenth anniversary of that game which I was in attendance for. In my opinion, it was probably one of the best pieces I wrote during my five-year run writing for the site. I wanted to bring it back to share it for this twentieth anniversary of that game and I hope one day this record actually gets broken by some team some day. I don’t think it will ever happen though. I think this is one LIU is going to own for a long, long time. I hope you enjoy this recollection of one of the more crazier game I ever attended and will never forget.  Continue reading “Twenty Years Ago, A Record-Shattering Blowout Win Altered The Course Of LIU Basketball” →