Feb. 23, 2002
Box Score
Albany, NY - The Marist College men's basketball team earned a share of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) regular season championship with a 60-57 come from behind win over host Siena College, this evening at Pepsi Arena in Albany, NY. The Red Foxes finish the season at 19-8 overall and at 13-5 in MAAC play, tied with Rider University, and will be the second seed at next weekends HSBC MAAC Tournament, also at Pepsi Arena.
The Red Foxes trailed by 10 points, 45-35, with 14:56 remaining in the contest, but would give up just 14 more points to the Saints. David Bennett (Salt Lake City, UT) drained a three-pointer with 14:40 remaining to cut the lead to seven-points, followed 56 second later by a Jared Hunsaker (Orem, UT) lay-up to get the Red Foxes to within five points, 45-40. Siena scored five of the next seven points, to take a 50-42 advantage with 11:46 left in the game. Neither team would score for the next 3:46, until Bennett drained a pair of free throws to get to within six points, 50-44.
Siena, 12-18 overall and 9-9 in the MAAC, missed the front end of a one-and-one with 7:47 left, and the Red Foxes capitalized with back-to-back jumpers by Matt Tullis (Orem, UT) and Bennett, to close to 50-48 with just under seven minutes left to play. J.J. Harvey connected on one free throw 20 second later, to lead by three points, 51-48, a lead that would be equaled with 5:17 to play, 53-50.
Sean Kennedy (Northport, NY) drained a pair of free throws with 5:09 left to play, to make it 53-52 and then tossed an alley-oop to Tullis, who slammed it home for a 54-53 lead. The lead was the first for the Red Foxes since a 3-0 lead in the first 30 seconds of the first half.
Bennett made the lead three, 56-53, with two free throws at 4:06, but Siena would scored the next four points, two free throws and a Justin Miller lay-up to retake the lead 57-56 with 2:47 remaining, but that would be the final lead of the evening for the host.
Bennett scored with 1:21 left to give Marist the lead for good, 58-57 and Tullis converted a pair of free throws with five seconds left to play to give the Red Foxes a 60-57 advantage. The Saints final shot, a three-pointer from Dwayne Archbold, rimmed out, as the buzzer sounded.
Kennedy led the Red Foxes with a 15 points, eight-assist, seven-rebound effort, as he played all 40 minutes of the game. Bennett tallied 13 points for Marist, the only other player in double-digits, off of the bench. Both Kennedy and Bennett were 4-4 from the free throw line, as Marist went 16-17 from the stripe. Siena, led by the 16 points of Archbold, was just 12-18 from the free throw line.
The Red Foxes will return to action on Saturday, March 2nd, in the quarterfinals of the MAAC Tournament. Marist will play at 7:00 pm and will take on the winner of the first round game between Siena and St. Peter's, which is to be played Friday at 4:45 pm.
Marist wins its first regular season title in its fifth year as a member of the MAAC. The 13 league wins is the most for the Red Foxes since winning 14 as a member of the Northeast Conference in the 1995-96 season.
