{"id":42694,"date":"2013-02-24T18:30:05","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T23:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=42694"},"modified":"2013-02-24T13:41:20","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T18:41:20","slug":"morrisville-state-wells-to-play-for-neac-championship-tournament-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=42694","title":{"rendered":"Morrisville State, Wells to play for NEAC Championship Tournament Title"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brandy Thurston, Director of Sports Information<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Morrisville, NY \u2013 Feb. 23, 2013) \u00a0Tournament host, Morrisville State \"Morrisville<\/a>College, handed visiting Penn State Harrisburg a 66-40 North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC) Men\u2019s Basketball Championship Tournament semi-final loss Saturday afternoon in Morrisville to advance to the title game for the second consecutive year.<\/p>\n

The defending champions will face Wells College (13-13) who defeated South Division regular season champion, Penn State Berks, in the second semi by an 82-61 final.<\/p>\n

Junior forward\u00a0Mickey Davis (Syracuse, N.Y.)\u00a0led the Mustang (20-5) charge with 15 points and seven rebounds, hitting 6-of-8 shots from the floor, while dishing out two assists and stealing two others.\u00a0Kucjok Ater (Syracuse, N.Y.)added 11, snaring six off the glass and blocking three, while teammate\u00a0Jordan Prior (Cortland, N.Y.)\u00a0came off the bench to round out top scoring with 10 points. Morrisville State controlled the boards 48-30, and dominated the offensive glass 17-6 over the Nittany Lions.<\/p>\n

Brandon Hanks (Syracuse, N.Y.)\u00a0posted a team high six assists and five steals.<\/p>\n

The Nittany Lions were held to single digits in scoring, as Harrisburg\u2019sThristan Lundy (Philadelphia, Pa.)\u00a0posted a team high nine points and added six rebounds to lead the team\u2019s efforts, adding three steals.\u00a0William Doyle (Franklin, Va.)\u00a0contributed seven points and three assists.<\/p>\n

Slow to get out of the gates, Morrisville State fell behind early as Harrisburg jumped out to a four point lead in the first 1:27 of the contest, and increased it to as many as six midway through the opening period.<\/p>\n

The Mustangs turned the tables and found their offensive rhythm, responding with a 15-2 run to put the visitors behind by seven with under six minutes to go in the frame.<\/p>\n

Doyle was able to bring Harrisburg back to within four with 5:35 to go, but Prior nailed one from long range to regain the seven point advantage for the hosts. Both teams played even in the final five minutes of the half, but Morrisville State went into the locker room with a spark and 31-22 lead, as Ater threw down a fast break dunk from Hanks as time expired in the half.<\/p>\n

Morrisville State increased it to 12 with a three by\u00a0Jailaan Kinsey (Syracuse, N.Y.)\u00a0nearly three minutes into the second half, and\u00a0Alberto De Los Santos (Enola, Pa.)\u00a0added one of his own to bring Harrisburg to within nine, but the Mustangs went on a 14-5 run to open the game to an 18 point margin with just over 10 minutes remaining in the contest.<\/p>\n

Harrisburg hit a scoring drought and was only able muster a mere eight points in the final 10 minutes as Morrisville State went on to add 16 more for the victory.<\/p>\n

The Mustangs out shot Harrisburg, nailing 23-of-61 shots (37.7 percent) as they posted 32 points in the paint and 22 off turnovers to the Nittany Lions 16-of-50 (32.0 %).<\/p>\n

Morrisville State will defend their title tomorrow at 2 p.m. in the STUAC gymnasium on the Morrisville State campus, against Wells College who pulled off the upset over Penn State Berks, the South Division regular season champions.<\/p>\n

Four put up big numbers for the Express, including\u00a0Jonathan Hurtado (Brooklyn, N.Y.)\u00a0who had a team high 25 points and 11 rebounds, adding five assists and four steals to his tallies.\u00a0EJ Taylor (Tampa Bay, Fla.)\u00a0added 19 points, nailing four from long range, while compiling five rebounds, two assists and four steals. JJ Walton (Ocala, Fla.)\u00a0added 15 and\u00a0Al Paul (Elmont, N.Y.)11 to round out top scorers for Wells.<\/p>\n

Tom Smith (Norristown, Pa.)\u00a0and\u00a0Dontez Reid (Gettysburg, Pa.)\u00a0each tallied 12 points and\u00a0Dameon Nixon (Coatesville, Pa.)\u00a0added 10 points, 10 boards, five assists and two steals, to lead the Penn State Berks (13-12) efforts.<\/p>\n

Wells led from the get go, posting their first score of the contest just 16 seconds in on a layup from Taylor as the Nittany Lions struggled to get their offensive game going, mustering just a free throw by\u00a0Jeff Schmidt (Orefield, Pa.)\u00a0in the opening four minutes as the Express posted eight points.<\/p>\n

Wells dominated the inside game, posting 24 points in the paint, including eight on second chance opportunities to hold a 43-33 advantage at intermission behind a combined 38 points from Taylor, Hurtado and Walton.<\/p>\n

In the second,\u00a0Connor Hough (Telford, Pa.)\u00a0hit back-to-back layups to bring the Nittany Lions to within seven, but Paul scored seven straight for Wells to regain the double digit lead as the Express didn\u2019t look back and collected the 21 point victory to advance to the title game.<\/p>\n

Wells went 31-for-57 from the floor (54.4 percent) on the day, while Berks shot just 35.1 percent on 20-of-57 shots. The Express won the rebounding game 42-32.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow\u2019s contest will be the third meeting between the two teams this season. Morrisville State were victorious in both, 71-58 and 77-65. The winner of tomorrow’s match up will receive the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brandy Thurston, Director of Sports Information (Morrisville, NY \u2013 Feb. 23, 2013) \u00a0Tournament host, Morrisville State College, handed visiting Penn State Harrisburg a 66-40 North Eastern Athletic Conference (NEAC) Men\u2019s Basketball Championship Tournament semi-final loss Saturday afternoon in Morrisville to advance to the title game for the second consecutive year. The defending champions will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}