Bombers Men's Basketball to Host St. John Fisher in Postseason Play Friday
ITHACA, N.Y. – The top-seeded Ithaca men's basketball team (20-5, 13-3 Empire 8) will host fourth-seeded St. John Fisher (14-11, 10-6 Empire 8) Friday in one of two Empire 8 Championship Tournament semifinal games. Ithaca, the only team to qualify for all eight of the Empire 8 post-season tournaments, hosts the Cardinals in an 8 p.m. game at Ben Light Gymnasium.
Second-seeded Stevens Institute of Technology (19-6, 12-4 Empire 8) hosts third-seeded Hartwick (15-10, 10-6 Empire 8) in Friday's other semifinal. The highest-seeded semifinal winner will host Sunday's final, to be played at either noon or 1 p.m., with the Empire 8's automatic bid to the NCAA playoffs at stake.
Ticket prices for Friday's game are $4 (general admission) and $2 (students/faculty/staff with ID, children and senior citizens). There is no charge for children under 12. Fans can follow Friday's semifinal online through Live Stats, VIC's broadcast or ICTV's webcast.
The Bombers, who are second in the latest NCAA East Region ranking, swept both meetings with the Cardinals this season. Ithaca claimed a 101-95 victory over the visiting squad in January before collecting an 85-71 road victory over St. John Fisher earlier this month.
The Bombers, Empire 8 regular-season champions for the third time in the past four years, are led by Empire 8 Player of the Year, senior Phil Barera (Belmont/Belmont, Mass.). The center has tallied team-bests of 17.4 points and 8.6 rebounds per game, while adding 10 double-doubles. His 66.7 percent field-goal accuracy ranks him second in the nation.
Having clinched its second consecutive 20-win season, Ithaca recently placed four on the Empire 8 All-Conference squad as Barera and sophomore guard Sean Rossi (Sparta/Sparta, N.J.) earned first-team recognition and junior guard Jordan Marcus (Solomon Schechter/West Orange, N.J.) and senior guard Chris Cruz-Rivas (West Genesee/Syracuse) were honored on the second team.
Leading the country with 9.7 assists per game, Rossi is one of five scoring in double figures for the Blue & Gold. He averages 11.7 points per contest in a team-leading 35.7 minutes per game. Rossi rewrote his own season assist record with 243 this season for 464 on his career, ranking him third in Ithaca’s record books. Marcus and Cruz-Rivas each surpassed the 1,000-point threshold this season averaging 16.7 and 14.0 points per game, respectively. Marcus has drained the second-most single-season three pointers in Ithaca history with 85, while Cruz-Rivas mirrors Barera’s efforts on the boards, pulling down 8.4 per game. Sophomore forward Andrei Oztemel (Staples/Westport, Conn.) owns that single-season three-point record with 87 thus far this season, while scoring 13.7 points per game.
Ithaca, ranked 35th nationally by D3Hoops.com, has won five consecutive including a weekend sweep of Hartwick and Stevens to claim the regular-season crown. The Bombers sit among the national top-20 in six team categories, with players represented in six individual categories according to the most recent NCAA Division III national summary.