‘New season’: Rider’s riding good vibes to Atlantic City, Peacocks miss the bus
One more massive Saturday roundup of the good, bad and ugly in New Jersey college hoops.
LAWRENCEVILLE – It wasn’t quite the seven-game winning streak they went on at the end of last season, but the Rider Broncs ended 2024-25 on another run to qualify for Atlantic City and bring some momentum along with them.
Flash Burton’s game-winning 3-pointer with less than five seconds left gave Rider an exciting 77-76 win over Niagara on Saturday, securing the eighth seed in the upcoming MAAC tournament.
Rider didn’t clinch a place in the tournament until Thursday, and its result against Niagara not only improved its seed but helped New Jersey rival Saint Peter’s stay in the race by eliminating the Purple Eagles. Saint Peter’s did its part by beating Canisius 70-62, but the last result it needed – a Fairfield loss to Quinnipiac – didn’t go its way. Fairfield grabbed the 10th and final spot in the MAAC tournament, ending Saint Peter’s season.
I covered the Rider game for the Trentonian – here’s the link to that story for more. It was the Broncs’ third straight win and their fifth in the last eight, which included gutsy road victories at Iona and Merrimack that kept their postseason dreams alive.
Rider will face No. 9 seed Siena on Tuesday in the first game of the men’s bracket.
“We won a tough one here (against Siena),” coach Kevin Baggett said postgame. “Well-coached and we’ll get started preparing for them tomorrow. We know they’re good, they’re actually playing well and won some big games down the stretch, so it’s going to be a challenge for us but we’re looking forward to it.”
The biggest weakness for Rider this season has been the disparity from 3-point range, which was on full display Saturday. Too many times, Niagara’s Jahari Williamson got an open look from three and made the Broncs pay, going 4-for-4 in the first half and 6-for-8 altogether. The Purple Eagles hit 13 of 23 from distance, statistically the only thing they did better than Rider, yet it amounted to a nine-point Niagara lead with less than nine minutes to play before the Broncs rallied.
Rider ranks outside the top 300 in both 3-point shooting (31.4%) and 3-point defense (36.2%). But to their credit, the Broncs keep finding other ways to win close games. This one should give them a boost for A.C.
“I’m going to tell the guys that how it was today, that kind of sense that the game was, that’s how the MAAC tournament is going to be,” T.J. Weeks said. “It’s going to be a dog fight. It’s going to be close. You’re going to have fans cheering, talking smack, all that. I think for us, it’s a new season. Our regular season records are out the window now. Zero-zero for us. Fresh start.”
This may be interesting only to me, but Rider’s eighth-place finish was one of only two predictions I got exactly right when I picked the conference’s order of finish last summer in my Lindy’s Magazine preview. Quinnipiac was the other, as the Bobcats lived up to their potential on paper and won the league. I had Marist and Iona second and fifth, and they wound up third and fourth. A few teams overperformed, like Mount St. Mary’s and newcomer Sacred Heart.
But my biggest swing and miss was Saint Peter’s. Just off a MAAC title, there was reason to like what the Peacocks had coming back even if Corey Washington and a few other key players were departing. They were also the only team in the MAAC that didn’t let me interview its head coach, so with little info, I took a stab and picked them third. Instead: 11th place, out of the tournament field entirely.
Even if my expectations were overinflated, what a disappointing year for Saint Peter’s, which played its usual tough-as-nails brand of defense but had one of the worst offenses in the country per KenPom metrics and effective FG%. I realize they can’t win the title every year, but champions to 11th is a major drop-off and they’re set to lose a good chunk of minutes and scoring production, to say nothing of what portal season may bring.
Princeton pummels Penn in Lee’s potential finale
Being at Alumni Gym meant I forfeited my last chance to watch Blake Peters and probably my last chance to watch Xaivian Lee inside Jadwin.
Peters made his senior day count with a career-high 25 points and Xaivian Lee had a ridiculous 23 points, 12 assists and 10 rebounds in the Tigers’ 95-71 win that ensured they would take the fourth and final berth in Ivy Madness.
Lee is now the owner of the first and second triple-doubles in Princeton’s recorded history. Because the first took place at Saint Joseph’s in December, Saturday’s performance was the first triple-double by a Princeton player in Jadwin.
Talk about a farewell. It’s a presumptive farewell, anyway, because Lee’s NBA draft stock should prompt him to keep his name in the ring this time around. A lot of sites have him as a second-round pick, and one more season at Princeton probably doesn’t push him up to a first (he’s already turning 21 in a few days and NBA teams don’t take many college seniors anymore).
As for the bracket: Princeton’s got to deal with Yale in the semifinals this weekend at host Brown. Yale is on a tear and had the Tigers’ number in both meetings this season. We’ll see what Princeton can pull out of its hat. Dartmouth and Cornell will meet in the other semi.
Something fun to note from this result is that it ties the all-time Princeton-Penn rivalry series at 126 wins apiece. Penn had the advantage for more than 120 years, and the Tigers needed to win 13 straight in the series just to catch up.
“There’s no love lost between these two programs, and certainly not from me,” Mitch Henderson told reporters. “I lost to them four times. These guys have never lost to them. I think rivalries are really important to acknowledge and talk about and that’s what it’s been like for us.”
Monmouth moves on
Monmouth has had plenty of great days from Abdi Bashir Jr. and Madison Durr this season. There were a couple Cornelius Robinson days. But Saturday was a Jack Collins day.
The junior from Manasquan added to his own personal history in the CAA tournament with a team-high 18 points, four rebounds and two steals in sixth-seeded Monmouth’s 65-60 win over 11th-seeded Hofstra last night. The Hawks moved on to face No. 3 Charleston tonight, which I’ve been saying is a winnable game for them.
Collins, who had a 32-point, five-rebound, five-steal explosion in his CAA tournament debut against Hampton two years back, is the type of gritty player who can also score when defenses lose track of him that makes him a terrifying dude to face in March. These two shots really typify his skill set, at least on offense, and that 3-pointer was so critical as a momentum-turner. There were eight lead changes and four ties in the second half, and Bashir’s fadeaway here put the Hawks ahead for good.
Jaret Valencia scored 12, Bashir had 11 and Dok Muordar had eight rebounds and a career-high six blocked shots. Here he is smacking one away like it was Hofstra’s tournament chances. (Tough year for a normally very stout CAA program.) We’ll see if this is enough for Monmouth to extend its season another day when the competition steps up a level.
FDU’s fight
There is no reason for the Knights to hang their heads at the end of their season. Their semifinal opponent Saturday, Central Connecticut State, owns the longest winning streak in Division I men’s basketball, now at 14 games. But FDU was the first team to take the Blue Devils to overtime after a furious second-half rally.
Down 21 early in the second half, FDU clawed back bit by bit, and a mini-run by Brayden Reynolds, Terrence Brown and Bismark Nsiah got the Knights back within single digits with 7:49 still to play. Limiting CCSU to 25 points in the second half may have been the Knights’ greatest feat, though. Their defense has been inconsistent and their rebounding has never been their calling card, but for the final 16 minutes of regulation plus all of overtime, CCSU didn’t get a single offensive rebound of a missed shot.
Jo’el Emanuel and Jameel Morris canned back-to-back threes to get FDU within two – it was Morris’ second straight start after making the first start of his college career Wednesday and contributing in a huge way. Finally, Brown hit this shot from the baseline to force overtime, where the Knights never quite grabbed the lead and CCSU snuck away.
Emanuel led with 17 points and eight rebounds; Brown put up 16, six, three assists and three steals; and Bismark Nsiah racked up 15 points (7-for-10 shooting), nine rebounds, two assists, three steals and two blocks. The Knights are going to miss the contributions of grad transfers Tyree Barba-Bey and especially Nsiah, who caught fire the past few weeks.
Scorecard for New Jersey D1 men’s programs and where their seasons stand (I might make this a recurring entry all week and add the women in a future edition):
Rutgers: Sunday vs. Minnesota, 1 p.m. (regular-season finale; qualified for Big Ten tournament)
Seton Hall: Wednesday vs. Villanova in New York City, 9 p.m. (Big East 11 vs. 6 game)
Princeton: Saturday vs. Yale in Providence, R.I., 11 a.m. (Ivy Madness semifinal)
Monmouth: Sunday vs. Charleston in Washington, D.C., 8:30 p.m. (CAA quarterfinal)
Rider: Tuesday vs. Siena in Atlantic City, 6 p.m. (MAAC 8 vs. 9 game)
Saint Peter’s: Season over (12-16, 7-13 MAAC, missed MAAC tournament)
FDU: Season over (13-20, 8-8 NEC, lost to CCSU in overtime in NEC semifinals)
NJIT: Season over (6-25, 3-13 America East, missed America East tournament)
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Happy Sunday, y’all. This newsletter has already been pretty comprehensive, but let’s clean the glass with a few more quick hits:
The race to avoid finishing last in the Big East wasn’t that competitive at the end of the day. DePaul finished the season on a two-game winning streak, beating Providence and Georgetown for the program’s first consecutive conference wins in three whole years. Up in Storrs? UConn 81, Seton Hall 50. Dylan Addae-Wusu went 0-for-10. Not much left to say about this team’s season. As noted above, the Pirates’ opponent in the 11-6 game will be Villanova, a team it nearly beat the other week, with a man in Kyle Neptune who’s coaching for his job.
The Seton Hall women nearly had a disastrous burnout in the Big East women’s tournament, trailing nearly the entire way last night against No. 11 seed Xavier, which had a 6-23 mark in the regular season. Then the Musketeers failed to make a shot in the fourth quarter and gave up 28 turnovers overall, including Yaya Lops’ steal of an inbounds pass and layup to give Seton Hall its first lead with 1:41 to play. The final there: Pirates 48, Musketeers 40. Third-seeded Seton Hall (who I incorrectly identified as the Big East’s No. 6 seed at the end of Thursday’s newsletter – apologies for the oversight) has a much tougher test today against second-seeded Creighton.
One observation from Princeton WBB’s 67-53 win at Penn to end the regular season: Fadima Tall has really blossomed into an all-around player on the wing, and when most of these players come back next year along with Madison St. Rose’s return from injury, the Tigers are going to be gooooood. Tall went for 20 points, 10 rebounds and four steals Saturday at the Palestra. Columbia still beat Princeton by a game for the outright Ivy title, and the Tigers will face third-seeded Harvard in Friday’s semifinals in Providence.