WEST HAVEN, Conn. - The University of New Haven men's basketball team suffered a 79-63 loss to Merrimack in the opening round of the Northeast-10 Conference Championship Friday night at Charger Gymnasium. With the loss, the Chargers season concludes after making their fourth straight postseason appearance.
New Haven finishes the season at 15-12 overall, while the Warriors improve to 16-11 and advance to the NE-10 Championship Quarterfinals on Sunday, March 1 at Southern New Hampshire.
Senior
Eric Anderson (Newark, N.J./Newark Tech) led the Chargers with 23 points and seven rebounds. The three-time NE-10 Defensive Player of the Year concludes his UNH career ranked 13th with 1,551 total points, second in rebounds with 1,271 and first in blocks with 238. He's one of only two players in Chargers' men's basketball history with 1,000 rebounds and 1,500 points.
Classmate
Cyrus James (Manchester, Conn./Howell Cheney Tech) scored six points and grabbed a pair of rebounds in his final game as a Charger. He concludes his career ranked second in the UNH record books with a .581 field goal shooting percentage on 223-of-384 shooting in his career. He also ranks eighth all-time with 94 career blocks.
Jemal Mosley (Spring Valley, N.Y./Don Bosco Prep / Putnam Science Academy) added 19 points on 7-of-15 shooting, while
Tommy Hunt (Smithfield, R.I./St. Andrew's) chipped in with 11 points on 4-of-9 from the floor.
Merrimack's Gelvis Solano led all scorers with 34 points on 10-of-21 from the floor. Troy Hammel added 14 and JT Strickland netted 12.
The Chargers shot 43.6 percent from the floor, 27.3 percent from three-point territory and 64.3 percent from the foul line. The Warriors hit 51.9 percent of their shots, including 44.8 percent from downtown. As a team, New Haven was out rebounded 34-26, but lead 28-20 in points in the paint.
After playing to a 10-8 lead in the first five minutes, the Chargers went cold from the field and Merrimack jumped out to a double digit lead. A 30-8 run in the next 15 minutes gave the Warriors a commanding 38-18 lead at halftime. The run was fueled by 22 first-half points from Solano who made 5-of-10 from three-point territory in the period.
During the first 4:09 of the second half, New Haven managed to cut the Warriors' lead to eight with a 14-2 run to open the stanza. Merrimack would increase it's lead back to 10 with a JT Strickland layup at the 15:30 mark. The advantage remained in double figures until an old fashion three-point play from Anderson at the 3:37 mark cut the lead back to nine, 67-58. In the end, the lead to too large and the Warriors held on for a 16-point victory.
