Category: Sports

By Chris McCree

Writer

The women’s swim team suffered a huge loss against Patriot League rival Colgate at Kinney Natatorium this past Saturday. The Bison fell to the Raiders 156-87, which is a dramatic change from the last time the two teams encountered each other. At the last year’s Patriot League Championship, the Bison beat out Colgate for second place.

The Colgate women won every individual event except the 50- and 100-yard freestyle races, both of which Molly Goebel ’11 won. With the loss, the Bison fell to 2-2 in the Patriot League and 4-2 for the year.

Despite the team’s struggles, the Orange and Blue produced several impressive individual performances, including a notable race by freestyler Kelly Pontecorvo ’14. Pontecorvo’s performance during the 1,000 free gave her the fifth fastest time in school history with a time of 10:25.39 seconds. She shaved about two seconds off her previous best time.

Goebel also anchored the 200 freestyle relay, which was comprised of Emily Wright ’14, Kaitlyn Utkewicz ’14 and Elizabeth Porcellio ’13. The four won the relay with a time of 1:37.37, their fastest time of the year. The relay actually only helped to tighten the point margin between the two teams, as Colgate had already clinched the win by the time the race started.

“The team swam well against Colgate,” Goebel said. “They are one of the best teams in the league and they came out very strong.”

The Bison will not encounter Colgate again until the Patriot League Championships in February, and Goebel acknowledged the team has room to improve.

“We did well but know we have our work set out for us in order to accomplish our goals at the end of the season. We are trying to focus on ourselves and what is in our control,” Goebel said. “This was a good test to see where we are and what we still have to do to get to where we want to be in February.”

The team expects to have a good week of practice before it heads off to New Jersey for the Rutgers Invitational. The three-day event will take place from Nov. 19-21 and will feature teams from all over the East Coast.

By Greg Stevenson

Senior Writer

A record-setting performance on special teams by Josh Eden ’12 was not enough for the Bison football team to overcome a powerful rushing attack from the Colgate Raiders on Saturday. The Bison fell 31-7 in their final home game of the 2010 campaign. The defeat dropped the Orange and Blue to 1-9 overall and 1-3 in the Patriot League.

“Josh is a great athlete and can do many things,” head coach Joe Susan said. “Josh has great timing and is relentless in his ability to penetrate and elevate.”

On three separate occasions, Eden responded to touchdown runs by Colgate’s Nate Eachus with a blocked extra point, limiting the Raiders to six points on each scoring possession. Eden now has eight blocked kicks on the season, including five in the last two games.

Eachus carried the ball 160 yards for Colgate (his ninth game over 100 yards this season) on 20 carries and three touchdowns, including the opening score of the contest just six minutes in.

“We knew Eachus would get his yardage,” Susan said. “He is one of the most physical runners we will face. The combination of Eachus and [Colgate quarterback Greg] Sullivan as runners gives Colgate a two-back attack that enables them to balance carries and makes them very difficult to defend.”

A quick three-and-out and punt by the Bison on the first series of the game gave the Raiders possession near midfield. Seven plays later, Eachus eluded Orange and Blue defenders for a 38-yard touchdown, giving the Raiders an early 6-0 advantage. The deficit remained at six as Eden rejected Colgate kicker Evan Colborne’s extra point try, his first block of the day.

It took just two minutes after their first touchdown for Colgate to extend their advantage to 13. Bison quarterback Brandon Wesley ’14 made just one mistake in the contest, but it turned out to be a costly one. Colgate’s Nat Bellamy returned an interception 51 yards for a touchdown, extending the Colgate lead.

Eachus scored twice more in the contest, on a one-yard run right before halftime and again with one minute remaining in the third quarter, which proved to be the knockout blow for the Bison. The deficit reached 31 before the Orange and Blue found the endzone with two minutes left in the fourth quarter to bring the final score to 31-7.

“It was a difficult day offensively as there were times when we drove the ball, then combined sacks or negative yardage plays to put ourselves in unmanageable third down situations,” Susan said. “We were inconsistent in our execution, hence our ineffectiveness in finishing drives.”

The Bison head into their final weekend of the season in need of another victory to close out a tough season. The Orange and Blue will be on the road against their bitter rival, the Holy Cross Crusaders, in their 2010 finale. Last season, the Bison upset the Patriot League Champion Crusaders in the final game of the regular season and hope that this year’s game is just as favorable.

“The final against Holy Cross will be a springboard into our off-season,” Susan said. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

By Joyce Novacek

Writer

The women’s cross country team placed seventh at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships Saturday in University Park, Pa. Sarah Moniz ’11 and Stephanie Fulmer ’12 led the Orange and the Blue, both recording times of 21:41 in the six-kilometer event and finishing 35th and 36th overall, respectively.

Alysha Hooper ’12 finished in 22:29, claiming the 67th spot overall and Alaina Chodoff ’11 and Kelly Grosskurth ’12 finished 77th and 89th, respectively.

“We decided to have a more aggressive strategy and go after it right from the start,” Moniz said. “We would have loved to beat one or two of the teams ranked ahead of us but we had a consistent, solid performance and were happy to place higher than we’ve been in recent years.”

Although they did not reach their ambitious goal, a seventh-place finish is still the team’s best since 2006.

“We ended up placing exactly where we were seeded against some of the best teams in the country including Villanova, the NCAA 2009 champions,” Fulmer said. “We were satisfied with our performance and it was a great finish for the varsity girls.”

The Villanova Wildcats won the meet for the second consecutive season, as they placed four runners in the top six spots.

“Because this was the last race of the season for the seven of us, I think we all had high goals and expectations to finish a little stronger than we did,” Hooper said. “Overall I think that our strong cross-country season will lead into a strong season for indoor and outdoor track.”

This meet marks the last of the season for the top seven runners on the Bison cross country team, but the rest of the team will compete at the ECAC Championships on Nov. 20 in the Bronx, N.Y.

“The ECAC Championship is a great opportunity to really show off the depth of talent on our team,” Moniz said.

“The ECAC championships allow everyone who may have been injured or had a slow start to the season the opportunity to be able to compete against many great colleges from the Northeast,” Fulmer said. “The meet is held on a historical course where decades of great runners have competed.”

By Andrew Lichtenauer

Contributing Writer

Dave Brown ’12 led the Bison on Saturday as the men’s cross country team finished 17th in a field of 28 teams at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships in University Park, Pa. Brown came in 83rd overall with a time of 32:26 on the 10-kilometer course.

Charles Murphy ’11 and Robert Yamnicky ’13 followed, coming in 87th (32:33) and 89th (32:34), respectively. Joshua Clark ’10 finished 101st (32:50), and Evan Novakowski ’10 finished 106th (32:59) overall, rounding out the scoring for the Bison.

“I thought the race was pretty average both for me and for the team,” Murphy said. “We ran well tactically and I don’t think we can really be too disappointed in our performance, but nobody had the kind of breakthrough race we needed to really excel as a team.”

Princeton won the men’s team title with a total of 53 points. Georgetown’s Ayalew Taye claimed the individual title with a time of 30:05. The Bison finished 17th of 28 teams with 461 points. The Bison were third among Patriot League teams, behind fifth-place Navy and 15th-place Lehigh.

“Our men once again ran as a great pack,” head coach Kevin Donner said. “We had a 30-second differential between our top five. The lack of a front runner hurt us from finishing higher, but I was very proud of how these guys competed all year.”

The team will continue the season next weekend at the IC4A Championships on Nov. 20 in the Bronx, N.Y.

By Greg Stevenson

Senior Writer

In one of the most hyped weekends for the University’s men’s basketball team in five years, the Orange and Blue reminded fans of past basketball heroics and proved to the Patriot League and to the nation that they are not all hype.

Facing two traditional Big East conference powerhouses, No. 6 Villanova and Marquette, the Bison hung tough, pushing both Big East foes to the limit before bowing out in the final minutes of the second half.

On Friday night, the Bison traveled to Philadelphia in one of their most anticipated matchups of the season against the Villanova Wildcats. Defensively, the Orange and Blue stymied the Wildcats, holding them to just 68 points, but the Bison could not mount anything on offense and fell to the Wildcats 68-52.

The Villanova advantage was eight after G.W. Boon ’11 drilled a three-pointer at the six-minute mark in the second half. That was the closest the Bison got the rest of the way, as Villanova ended the game on a 14-6 run.

Corey Fisher was one of three Wildcats to score in double-figures, leading the way for Villanova with 24 points. Darryl Shazier ’11 and Mike Muscala ’13 scored 12 and 10 respectively to keep the Orange and Blue in the contest until the final minutes.

If Friday’s game against Villanova was a step in the right direction for the upcoming season, Sunday’s contest at the Marquette Golden Eagles could be the start of a Patriot League championship run for the Bison.

Even though the Bison faced a trip from Philadelphia to Milwaukee and an under-48-hour turn-around time, the Orange and Blue did not show it early against the Golden Eagles. The Bison offense that was held to 52 points in their opener exploded for 41 in the first half, giving the team an eight-point advantage at halftime.

A free throw by Joe Willman ’13 at the 10:22 mark in the second half gave the Bison an 11-point lead.

The Golden Eagles had other ideas about a Bison upset, though. Marquette scored 24 unanswered points over an eight minute stretch, turning a 12-point deficit into a 12-point lead with two minutes left, one the Golden Eagles would not relinquish, escaping with a 72-61 victory.

Bryson Johnson ’13 tallied 18 points, all on three-pointers. Boon and Willman each scored 11 in an overall balanced scoring effort for an Orange and Blue squad that gave two top-tier teams all they could handle in one weekend of play.

After hanging tough with two Big East powers over the weekend, the opening week of play for the Bison culminated with a 66-38 blowout victory against the Binghamton Bearcats in the 2011 home opener. The Orange and Blue put on a defensive show for their fans in Sojka, limiting the Bearcats to under 25 percent shooting from the floor and outscoring Binghamton 41-20 in the second half.

The Bison look to build on a stellar opening week with four games in five days, all on the road, starting with a trip to Saint Francis tomorrow evening. The Orange and Blue then head to Harrisonburg, Va., home of the James Madison Dukes, for their final three contests of the CBE Classic. The Bison face Presbyterian on Monday, Princeton on Tuesday and the Dukes on Wednesday.

By Mike Wolf

Writer

The volleyball team beat Holy Cross in four sets on its home court on Friday to clinch a berth in the Patriot League Tournament. In the final match of the regular season at home on Saturday, the team lost in three sets to Army.

Against Holy Cross, the Bison won the sets 25-18, 26-28, 25-12, 25-16, and clinched the fourth seed in the tournament, which will begin Saturday.

Kyleigh McAhren ’12 and Kristen Titley ’14 each had 14 kills. The Orange and Blue played well as a team and had an overall hitting percentage of .319, their best of the season.

Following a somewhat slow start in the first two sets, the Bison came out in the third set with offensive influence from Heidi Kamp ’11 and Ragin Jackson ’13. The team tallied 15 kills in the set.

In the fourth set, the Orange and Blue slowly nurtured a growing lead until they went up by seven midway through the set. Holy Cross could no longer make a move and the Bison won comfortably.

Rachel Rodriguez ’11 had 37 assists and 12 digs, while Leylin Marroquin ’14 added 13 digs. Katie Baumgarten ’12 and Emily Sawanobori ’12 also added 10 digs apiece in the match.

The team followed Friday night’s performance with one of its best-played matches of the season on Saturday. Though they lost 3-0, the Bison truly made it a tough match for a highly skilled Army team.

Both teams in Saturday’s match were set in their seeding for the playoffs so the game did not matter for the season. Army won the match 25-20, 25-21, 25-20. Baumgarten led the team with  nine kills and 12 digs and no other hitter had more than six kills.

The team continues the season on Saturday with a match against American University in Washington, D.C.  “Going in as the underdog is exciting because all the pressure’s on American,” Kamp said. A win in this match would take the Bison to the championship match against either Colgate or Army.

By Eric Weiss

Senior Writer

The women’s basketball team began the season with a strong performance, defeating Rider 53-48 in their home opener.

““The game against Rider was an awesome start to the season,” Rachel Voss’ 13 said. “We were all so excited and it felt great to get our first win.”

The Bison had to fight back a late Rider rally to claim the victory. With 7:24 left as the score read 43-37 in favor of the Orange and Blue, but the game quickly took a turn for the worse as the home team missed the next five shots and had five turnovers over the next four and a half minutes. Rider eventually took a 44-43 lead.

But Joyce Novacek ’11, Lindsay Horbatuck ’13 and Voss would not let the Bison be defeated in their home opener. Novacek began the team’s resurgence, connecting on two free throws while Horbatuck and Voss followed suit with two layups. In the final moments of the game, Shelby Romine ’14 took the dagger to the Broncs as she buried two free throws with 53 seconds, putting the score at 51-44.

“After working so hard in the weight room, on the track and in the gym over the course of the preseason it was very exciting to win our first game,” Novacek said.

Romine, who scored 17 points in addition to five assists and two rebounds, was the leading scorer for the night. Romine scored the most points by a first-year in a season opener since 2003.

The Bison will have to try to clean up their number of turnovers in future games, as they had 24 over the course of this contest. Rider had 29 turnovers.

“One of our top goals on the season is to make one of the best turnarounds in the nation.  We are a different team this year and can’t wait to surprise more people,” Voss said.

The Bison will try to continue their resurgence as they tackle more teams in their packed regular season schedule, starting with a home game against Buffalo on Sunday at 2 p.m.

By Justin Cohen

Contributing Writer

In recent years,  big-name markets like the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, Cardinals and Braves have dominated the October headlines and claimed postseason MLB success. That was not the case this year when the Texas Rangers and San Francisco Giants played each other in the 2010 World Series. But although there were no big market teams this year, those who were looking forward to the 2010 World Series saw excellent pitching performances and games where every hit mattered.

The Rangers, a team littered with storylines, knocked off the Yankees in the ALCS to reach their first World Series in franchise history thanks to the help of their offensive production and Cliff Lee, viewed by some as the best postseason pitcher in history. The Giants used ace Tim Lincecum and a young and talented lineup to defeat the Phillies, who had what many claimed to be the best rotation in baseball.

As the series began, the Giants lit up Cliff Lee for seven runs and cruised to an early 2-0 series lead. The Giants put up 20 runs in the first two games, despite the fact that most of their other contests in the 2010 postseason were decided by only one or two runs.

The Rangers were able to muster up a win in game three, in which all of their runs came off the long ball. The stars of the team, Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler and Michael Young, drove in the runs to cap an 8-3 victory.

The Giants then sent rookie pitcher Madison Bumgarner on the mound for game four. Bumgarner silenced his critics as he threw eight scoreless innings and only allowed three hits for the Giants to easily take the win and be one win away from clinching their first World Series Championship in over 50 years.

Game five gave the fans the pitching matchup they were expecting for Game one as Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum took the mound once again in a battle of aces. The Rangers went into the game knowing the Giants would return to San Francisco as champions if they did not win.

Through the first six innings, both pitchers performed as expected, keeping the game scoreless. But in the seventh inning Cliff Lee gave up a three run home run to Edgar Renteria to give the Giants a 3-0 lead. The Rangers responded with a run in the seventh, but Lincecum finished without any other trouble and reliever Brian Wilson delivered the final blow in the ninth, crowning the Giants the 2010 World Series Champions.  Renteria was awarded series MVP for his late game heroics and fans begged him not to retire as he had contemplated doing in the offseason.

The Giants celebrated their victory parade a week ago Wednesday, and the team received a key to the city from Mayor Gavin Newsom. It was the first championship for the city since the 49ers last won the Super Bowl in 1995. While most of the baseball world will be focusing on the free agent market and readjusting their rosters, the Giants can only build on this success and look to continue their winning ways in the seasons to come.

By Eric Brod

Senior Writer

The women’s swimming team continued its impressive start to the season, posting a 2-1 record against Patriot League foes Lafayette, American and Navy at Kinney Natatorium last Saturday. The Orange and Blue posted victories over American 224-66 and Lafayette 225-75 but lost to defending Patriot League Champion Navy 154-144.

The Bison posted seven first-place finishes, led by Emily Wright ’14, who won the 50-yard freestyle in 23.92 seconds. Wright also finished third in the 100 free in 52.39 seconds. Four other Bison finished in first place: Kelly Pontecorvo ’14 in the 1,000 free, Kelly Purcell ’13 in the 100 free, and Elizabeth Porcellio ’13 in the 200 IM.

“I think that having competition between the team members is beneficial to all of us, because we are really pushing each other and motivating each other more than competing against each other,” Goebel said. “Having multiple girls in an event shows how much depth we have and the strength of our team. We are a team first and foremost and we constantly encourage each other. It is exciting to see your teammates do well and it makes us want to push ourselves even more.”

In diving, Morgan Popple ’12 finished second in the one-meter board with 224.50.

The Bison women return to action Saturday when they host Colgate at Kinney Natatorium.