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Men's basketball team huddle

PREVIEW: Men's basketball to make 38th NE10 postseason appearance on Saturday

2/24/2022 9:15:00 PM

MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Saint Anselm College men's basketball team enters the Northeast-10 Conference postseason as the No. 3 seed in the Northeast Division and will take on the No. 4 seed in the Southwest Division, Southern Connecticut State, on Saturday, Feb. 26.

No. 3 NE DIVISION SAINT ANSELM COLLEGE HAWKS (15-9, 11-8 NE10)
Roster | Schedule and Results | 2021-22 Statistics | News

No. 4 SW DIVISION SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY OWLS (7-17, 4-14 NE10)
Roster | Schedule and Results | 2021-22 Statistics | News

Saint Anselm concluded the regular season with a 15-9 overall record alongside a record of 11-8 against NE10 opponents. Southern Connecticut State lost four of its 18 games in the league in 2021-22, completing the regular season with an overall mark of 7-17.

The winner of Saturday's game will travel to the University of New Haven, the No. 2 seed in the Southwest Division, for an NE10 Quarterfinals contest on Monday, Feb. 28. The next round of the postseason was scheduled to begin Sunday, but with Friday's inclement weather, the majority of the First Round games were moved to Saturday – all of the Quarterfinals tilts will be contested on Monday.

The NE10 semifinals will begin Thursday, Mar. 3 with the league championship game to be played on Sunday, Mar. 6. Both of those rounds will be played at the site of the highest remaining seeds.

All tickets for Winter NE10 postseason events will cost $5.00. Students attending NE10 member institutions will be permitted to attend the games for free after presenting a valid identification card.

The Hawks men's basketball team and Saint Anselm College are proud to honor, recognize and thank the team's Hawks Soar Higher Club donors.

SCOUTING SAINT ANSELM

  • Saint Anselm, winners of an NE10-record nine postseason championships, is making its 38th appearance in the league playoffs. The Hawks have qualified for each of the last nine postseason championships held by the NE10, a streak that began with the 2012-13 season.
  • The Hawks won the most recently-held NE10 Championship, defeating New Haven in overtime in March 2020 while earning the league's automatic berth to the NCAA Division II Championship. The NCAA postseason was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and never played.
  • Saint Anselm finished the regular season with an 11-8 record in league play, opening the 2021-22 campaign with back-to-back losses against NE10 competition before starting the New Year with eight NE10 wins in nine opportunities.
  • Senior Chris Paul (Highland Mills, N.Y.) leads Saint Anselm with 18.9 points per game. The NE10 leader in free throws made (134) and free throws attempts (184), Paul also hauls in an average of 7.8 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game for the Hawks.
  • Paul ranks seventh all-time in team history (sixth among point scorers who played their entire careers on the Hilltop) with 1,849 career points in 116 games. He has made exactly 500 career free throws for Saint Anselm, trailing only Jim Moore '06 who sent home 513 in three years at Saint Anselm and 577 across a four-year career between the Hilltop and Youngstown State.
  • Paul's 789 career rebounds rank eighth in team history. Darlington Okerulu '06, inducted into the Saint Anselm Athletics Hall of Fame on Feb. 19, leads all student-athletes in program history with 953 caroms.
  • Miles Tention (Palo Alto, Calif.) plays an average of 37:03 per game, ranking one spot ahead of Paul (36:18) for third place in the NE10. Additionally, Tention has a 1.26 assist-to-turnover ratio, ranking 13th in the NE10 in that metric.
  • Tention's 41.9% three-point field goal percentage leads all NE10 student-athletes among those with at least 2.5 triples made per game) and his 65 made treys is fourth in the league.
  • Senior Gustav Suhr-Jessen (Virum, Denmark), who reached 1,000 career points at Saint Anselm earlier this season, logged three consecutive games with a double-double from Feb. 2 against Assumption through Feb. 8 at Southern New Hampshire. His 16 career double-doubles trails only the team's active leader, Paul (20).
  • Senior Alonzo Jackson (Medford, Mass.) has rejected 82 shots, tying with Kevin Sheehy '01 for second all-time in team history. Jackson is averaging exactly one blocked shot per game, ranking eighth in the NE10. The all-time leader for Saint Anselm is Matt Cahill '06 with 86 from 2002-06.
  • As a team, Saint Anselm ranks second in defensive rebounds per game (29.08), a figure that is ninth among the 296 NCAA Division II men's basketball teams. The Hawks are third in the NE10 in three-point field goal defense (31.8), total rebounds per game (38.71), rebound margin (2.9) and free throws made (313).
  • Saint Anselm opponents are shooting under 23% from beyond the arc (15-for-67) across the last three games.

SCOUTING SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE

  • The Owls opened the season with back-to-back victories at the Bridgeport Tournament before losing four consecutive games, including three straight to open NE10 play. The Owls are currently mired in a three-game losing streak and have lost six out of seven since falling to nationally-ranked Bentley on Tuesday, Feb. 8.
  • Southern Connecticut State has a 1-10 record in games played away from the James Moore Field House. The Owls are on pace for their first sub-.500 season since the 2010-11 campaign where they posted a 12-15 overall record.
  • Lyron Bennett leads the Owls in several statistical categories, including points per game (13.8), assist-to-turnover ratio (1.73), assists per game (4.5), minutes played per game (34:01), and assists (109).
  • Ulyen Coleman is averaging 12.5 points per game with C.J. Seaforth rounding out the double-digit point scorers with 10.6 points per game to his credit. Coleman's 302 field goal attempts on the year ranks in the top-10 of the NE10.
  • As a team, SCSU's 14.54 turnovers forced per game is its highest statistical ranking among the league's 14 programs. The Owls also rank highly among NE10 programs with 6.7 steals per game and 11.0 rebounds per game, both fourth in the conference.

LAST TIME OUT vs. SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE

  • Saint Anselm picked up a 74-60 victory at Southern Connecticut State on Feb. 21, less than a week before Saturday's postseason contest. Suhr-Jessen and Paul each scored 28 points for the Hawks, who shot over 55% in the second half on the way to the victory. Suhr-Jessen reached career-high marks in points scored (28) and field goals made (11).
  • In Monday's win on the road, Saint Anselm won the rebounding battle, 45-to-28, and scored 17 of the game's 22 second-chance points. Junior Owen McGlashan (Marlton, N.J.) hauled in a team-leading 10 rebounds for the Hawks.
  • Ahead by 11 points at one point in the second half, the Hawks did not let up, firing off 10 of the game's next 14 points to build a game-high lead of 17 points with 2:27 left in regulation time. Suhr-Jessen had eight of his team's 10 points with Paul chipping in the other two to create the game-high lead.

ALL-TIME – NE10 POSTSEASON

  • The Hawks trail only Bentley (39) for NE10 postseason appearances with 38 in the team's 39 seasons of competition in the conference. Saint Anselm is the far-and-away leader in NE10 postseason winning percentage (54-30, .643) and has won a league-leading nine titles.
  • Saint Anselm has made it to the NE10 Semifinals on 24 occasions, more than six times more than the second-place team, and has played in the NE10 title game on 14 occasions, settling for a league runner-up placement just five times.
  • Southern Connecticut State is making its 12th NE10 postseason appearance and owns a .375 winning percentage, losing six of its 16 games. The Owls won their only NE10 Championship during the 2013-14 season, edging New Haven in a 73-71 thriller.

ALL-TIME vs. SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE

  • Saint Anselm is 31-15 in the all-time series against Southern Connecticut State that dates back to Jan. 6, 1969.
  • The Hawks have won seven of the last eight games, with the one loss coming at home to the Owls to open the 2018-19 postseason. Despite that loss, the Saint Anselm campaign ended with the program's second NCAA Division II East Region Championship and its first-ever victory at the Elite Eight.
  • Prior to that NE10 Quarterfinals loss to Southern Connecticut State, the Hawks won each of the prior two meetings against the Owls in the league postseason. Both victories came in the NE10 Quarterfinals in 2016-17 and 2017-18.
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