Nov. 20, 2009

Complete Game Notes in PDF Format

GAME 4 * November 21, 2009

Matchup: Lafayette (2-1) at NJIT (1-1)
Tip-off: 4:00 p.m.
Site: Newark, N.J.
Arena: Fleisher Athletic Center (1,500)

MATCH UP: Lafayette (2-1) will look for its second straight win of the season when the Leopards travel to NJIT (1-1) on Saturday. Lafayette has played NJIT just twice and won both meetings.

LAST TIME OUT: The Leopards traveled west to Loretto, Pa. to take on St Francis (Pa.), on Thursday night. Lafayette used career-best efforts from Jared Mintz (24) and Jim Mower (17) to pull of an 88-77 victory. Mower had three three's and four assists and was 4-of-4 from the line. Mike Gruner also chimed in with 17 points, three assists and two steals.

NEARLY PERFECT: Junior forward Jared Mintz scored his 24 points on 9-of-9 shooting from the floor and was 6-of-7 from the line.

MORE ABOUT MINTZ: Coming into Thursday's game at St. Francis, Mintz had made 12 straight free throws to start the season. His missed his first attempt of the night, but rallied to make 6-of-7 seven on the night. Mintz is shooting 95 percent from the stripe for the seaosn and the Leopards are converting 84 percent as a team.

FOUR IN DOUBLE FIGURES: Lafayette featured four players in double figures against St. Francis (Pa.): Jared Mintz 24, Jim Mower 17, Mike Gruner 17 and Jeff Kari with 12. Lafayette also had four players in double digits against Wagner.

Meet the Captains: Senior guards Jeff Kari and Mike Gruner are holding leadership roles for the 2009-10 season. Kari, who served as a co-captain last year, is the team's top returning scorer (10.7 ppg). Gruner started in 19 games last year and accounted for 61 assists.

DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE: Junior forward Jared Mintz led the team with 20 points and 10 rebounds against Wagner in at 81-72 home victory to start the season. The double-double was Mintz's third of his career.

100 AND STILL GOING: The 2009-10 season marks Lafayette College's 100th season of men's basketball.

196...AND COUNTING: Lafayette head coach Fran O'Hanlon needs four wins to reach the 200-win plateau.

ON THE SIDELINE: The all-time winningest coach in Lafayette history and longest-tenured coach in the Patriot League, Fran O'Hanlon (Villanova, '70) enters his 15th season as the Leopards' head coach. A two-time Patriot League Coach of the Year recipient, O'Hanlon has twice led Lafayette's program to the NCAA Tournament and lays claim to three Patriot League regular-season titles. With a 75-71 double-overtime victory over Lehigh on Feb. 18, 2007, O'Hanlon became the winningest coach in Lafayette history and now holds an all-time record of 196-211 on College Hill. O'Hanlon's overall record does not necessarily tell an accurate story of the job he has done at Lafayette. The Philadelphia native inherited a 2-25 team when he took over in 1995-96 and won seven, 11, 19, 22 and 24 games over the next five seasons. From 1997-2000, Lafayette was 65-24 overall and 31-5 in the conference with two NCAA Tournament appearances. In 1996, the Patriot League, which was originally founded based on the principle of need-based financial aid only, began allowing athletic scholarships. However, it was not until 2006 that Lafayette chose to do so. By no coincidence, during that span, Lafayette posted a 79-91 mark and was 38-44 in the league.

ABOUT NJIT: NJIT comes into the match-up sitting at 1-1. The Highlanders are coming off a 96-54 win over St. Joseph's (N.Y.) on Monday. Freshman guard Drejon Scott scored a game-high 15 points. Classmate Nick Lopez scored 14 points and sophomore Sammy Schickel had 13 points. Lopez, an active forward, made all four of his attempts from the field, and Schickel, who missed the entire 2008-09 season due to injury, collected nine rebounds in his second college game.

Taking on his first head coaching position, Jim Engles (Dickinson '90) agreed to a five-year contract to lead the Highlanders after having been an assistant coach at the Division I level for 18 years, the last five as the lead assistant at Columbia.

NJIT is in its first season as a full member of NCAA Division I. The Highlanders compete in the The Great West Conference made up of 10 institutions that range from Texas to California to Newark, N.J. where NJIT is located. The 10 schools are spread over seven different states and four time zones.

NEXT UP: Lafayette will host its second doubleheader of the season when the Leopards welcome Hartford to Kirby Sports Center on Tuesday night for an 8:30 p.m. tip off. The women's game vs. St. Bonaventure begins at 6 p.m.

FRESH FACES: Head coach Fran O'Hanlon added two new coaches to his staff this season. Pat Doherty is a familiar face to the Lafayette program, graduating from Lafayette in 2004. Doherty was an assistant coach at Williams College in 2008-09, helping lead Williams to a 17-9 overall record. In 2007-08 Doherty served as an assistant coach at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). Matt Blue holds down the final assistant coaching spot. Blue, a 2007 graduate of St. Lawrence comes to Lafayette after spending the 2008-09 season at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa. He helped lead the Crusaders to an 18-8 overall mark and a 13-3 finish in the Landmark Conference.

FRESH IMPACT: Freshman Tony Johnson has begun to make an impact on the court for the Leopards. Johnson is averaging 18 minutes per game and has done a solid job of handling the ball. Johnson had three assists at St. Francis (Pa.) on Thursday night and has averaged two per game. Johnson leads the team in steals and is also third on the team in rebounding. Johnson, a 6-0 guard, hails from Folsom, Calif. and is the only true point guard on the team. Fellow first-year player Levi Giese has seen action in all three games while averaging 2.3 points and 1.3 rebounds per game. A 6-9 forward, Giese comes from Tulsa, Okla. and brings solid perimeter skills.

D.C. DANDIES: Though players from 11 states and three countries are represented on Lafayette's roster, the Leopards do have a tendency for the D.C. area. Prior to arriving on College Hill, three of Lafayette's guards attended schools within 25 miles of the nation's capital. Michael Gruner shined at Walt Whitman High School, where he led his team to a state championship. Junior Ben Wheeler played at Chantilly where he garnered first team all-district and second team all-region accolades his senior year. Sophomore Nick Petkovich is the most recent addition from the D.C. area, an All-IAC Conference First-Team selection from Bullis Prep.

AROUND THE WORLD: Did you know that three international players are featured on the roster for tonight's matchup? Lafayette boasts three international players in Jared Mintz (Toronto, Canada), Marek Koltun (Krakow, Poland) and Deirunas Visockas (Lithuania)

BASKETBALL IQ: Lafayette placed a program-best five student-athletes on the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll during the 2008-09 season. The distinction recognizes those individuals who have earned a varsity letter and maintained a 3.2 GPA during the spring semester. Senior Michael Gruner and sophomores Rob Delaney and Andy Moore each earned a nod.

GRUNER GETS IT DONE: If senior Michael Gruner can pick up where he left off last season, the Leopards will be in pretty good shape. Gruner has been a mainstay in the lineup the past two seasons. In 2008-09, he proved to be Lafayette's steadiest ballhandler, dishing out 61 assists to 44 turnovers for a 1.4 assist/turnover ratio and 196 points (8.2 ppg). Gruner is also a Marquis Scholar, the college's most prestigious academic scholarship. This season, Gruner is contributing 9.3 points, 1.7 rebounds and 1.0 assists per game. He had a standout performance against Saint Francis with 17 points and hit a running banked three-pointer before half to pad the halftime lead to 42-33. Coming out of high school in Bethesda, Md., Gruner led his Walt Whitman squad to the Maryland 4A state title while earning Gazette Co-Player of the Year honors along with the NBA's 2007-08 Rookie of the Year Kevin Durant of Montrose Christian.

THE PRESEASON POLL: Lafayette was chosen to finish eighth in the Patriot League Preseason Poll. The poll is voted on by the conference head coaches and sports information directors. Holy Cross was picked to finish first with 13 first place votes, followed by Lehigh, Bucknell, Army, Colgate, American and Navy.

IN THE RANKS: Seven of Lafayette's non-conference opponents were picked to finish within the top five of their respective leagues in the preseason polls. At No. 2, Long Island is the highest ranked non-conference opponent the Leopards will face. Lafayette will tip off against six opponents from the Northeast Conference -- the most of any one conference on the Leopards' schedule.

LAFAYETTE ON TELEVISION: The Leopards will have 13 of their regular-season games televised during the 2009-10 season. The Leopards will also lead the Patriot League with seven nationally-televised games, as MASN (available through both DIRECTV and DISH Network) will air Lafayette's entire slate of home league contests on a tape-delay basis. Emmy-nominated local sports broadcaster Gary Laubach will handle all of Lafayette's play-by-play duties for the 13th straight season. Former Lafayette men's basketball coach John Leone will provide color analysis for the 11th season.

FRESHMAN PHENOM: Sophomore forward Ryan Willen was named to the All-Patriot League Rookie team in 2008-09. He was the first freshman since Andrew Brown '09 and the seventh freshman in school history to earn the accolade. Willen made an immediate impact in his first season as a Leopard. In just the second game of the year, the Cape Girardeau, Mo., native recorded the first of three double-doubles, which ranked as third-most in the league. He was also the first Lafayette freshman since 1995-96 (Stefan Ciosici '00) to record more than one double-double in his rookie year. Willen received his first starting nod in the conference season opener at Holy Cross on Jan. 10 and has not been left out of the lineup since. He consistently led the Leopards in rebounding in 2008-09 with 4.9 boards per game and was the first freshman since the 1995-96 season to lead the team in rebounding. He nabbed the school's first weekly accolade of the season on Feb. 23, 2009 following one of his best performances of his short career. As part of a career-high 20-point performance on Feb. 18, his last-second free throws stopped Bucknell from overcoming a 16-point second-half deficit and secured Lafayette's seventh win of the season. His production was his eighth-straight game of scoring in double figures. This season, Willen is the Leopard's second leading scorer averaging 12.7 points per game and shooting 71.4 percent from the line. In addition to his work on the court, Willen is currently enrolled in organic chemistry, ethics, introduction to psychology, religions in world cultures and two labs.

ON THE RADIO: The road games of the 2009-10 Lafayette men's basketball season will air on WSAN-AM 1470 "The Fox." Entering his 43nd season as the radio voice of Lafayette athletics, Dick Hammer will continue to call the play-by-play action. Joining Hammer courtside for most contests will be Lafayette Sports Information Director Phil LaBella.