Widener Rolls into the Quarterfinals
Anthony Moscaret
TOURNAMENT PAGE
By Anthony Moscaret
WAYNE, N.J. – Widener University rolled to a 92-65 win over Wilson College in the First Round of the 2018 ECAC Men’s Basketball Championship on Wednesday evening.
The Pride improve to 16-10, while Wilson finished the season with a 20-8 record.
Widener finished with four players in double-figures as
Tyler Drew (Old Bridge, N.J.) and
Jared Peters (Shillington, Pa.) each registered 16 points.
Sardayah Sambo (Middletown, Del.) finished the night with 15 points and teammate
Sam Smith (Wyomissing, Pa.) capped the evening with 14 points. Smith tallied 10 points in the first half as he went 4-of-7 from the floor.
With both teams tied at 13 in the opening half, Widener took control as it used a 22-11 run to go up, 35-24. The Pride never looked back as they went into halftime with a 48-32 lead giving them their second largest lead (16) of the first half. Their previous largest lead of the half was at 3:29 when they lead by 17 (41-24).
Connor Laverty (Upper Township, N.J.) closed out the scoring for Widener as he tallied the team’s last five points before entering the midway point of the game. He finished with eight points on the night.
The second half saw Wilson start the scoring off early as it scored in the first 14 seconds of the half, but Widener made sure to put a quick stop to that. The Pride put the lead back to 16 as Drew grabbed a defensive board and laid it in on the opposite end to make it 50-34 with 18:55 left. After that Widener continued to dominate as it tallied 20 points in the paint for the half to give them 50 points in the paint for the game.
The Pride won the battle on the glass 42-38 with 32 of them coming on the defensive side.
As a team, Widener shot 35-of-66 (53.0%) from the field and was 7-of-17 (41.2%) from three and was 15-of-21 (71.4%) from the line.
Wilson was paced by
Keion Adams (Gaithersburg, Md.), who registered a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds, while teammate
Ian Frazier (Palmyra, Pa.) finished the night with 14 points on 5-of-9 shooting.
The Pride will face the winner of Baruch College on Friday, March 2 at 8 p.m. at Wilkes University.
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