Baruch Advances to Quarterfinals with Win over William Paterson
Anthony Moscaret
TOURNAMENT PAGE
By Anthony Moscaret
WAYNE, N.J. –
Chimaechi Ekekeugbor’s (Matawan, N.J.) and
Andre Harris’ (Melville, N.Y.) double-doubles led Baruch College past William Paterson University, 64-57, in the First Round of the ECAC Men’s Basketball Championshis on Wednesday evening.
The Bearcats improve to 16-11, while the Pioneers close out the season with a 16-13 mark.
Baruch got off to a fast start as it tallied seven-straight points and built an 8-2 lead within the first five minutes of the contest. The Bearcats strung together a foul shot, back-to-back layups and a three-pointer in the process from four different players. William Paterson knocked down a trey to make it 10-5, but Baruch then put together 13-6 run to make it, 23-11 (8:52).
The Pioneers used a spurt of their own that started off with a
Nasir Fields (Winslow Twp., N.J.) steal that led to a three-pointer from
George Sapp (Sicklerville, N.J.) to start a 9-0 run and bring them within three (23-20) with six minutes left in the half. Both team. The two squads traded baskets after that, but William Paterson then used a foul shot and a layup to take its first lead of the game to go up, 27-26.
Both teams for the remainder of the first half battled going into halftime with the William Paterson leading, 30-28.
The second half saw the Pioneers carry over their scoring as they opened up the half with a 6-0 run to push the lead to, 36-28, and force Baruch to call an early timeout. The Pioneers biggest lead of the game didn’t last long as the Bearcats got hot and scored 14 straight points to retake the lead and go up, 42-36, coming out of the timeout. Ekekeugbor scored 10 of the 14 points for Baruch during the run.
Down the stretch the Pioneers brought it within five points three times with under nine minutes remaining in the contest. Their effort just wasn’t enough as the Bearcats were able to keep the Pioneers outreach down the stretch.
As a team, Baruch shot 28-of-64 (43.8%) from the field while draining four three-pointers during the contest.
Ekekeugbor tallied a team-high 37 points with 20 of the points coming in the second half, while grabbing 11 rebounds in the process. Harris finished the night with 12 points of his own and grabbed an identical 11 rebounds.
Richy Espinal (Ridgefield Park, N.J.) paced the William Paterson with a double-double giving him team-highs in rebounds with 15 and points with 13.
Dapo Badmos (Toronto, Canada) tallied 10 points on 5-of-10 shooting from the field for the game.
The Bearcats will face Widener University on Friday, March 2 at 8 p.m. at Wilkes University.
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