The smell of upsets was in the air on Saturday at the America East men’s basketball tournament. First, No. 2 Vermont went down. Then, No. 3 Boston University was upset by UMBC. When it was the Bearcats’ turn, they faced a Hartford squad that had reached the championship game the year before.
Behind Malik Alvin’s 29 points, the No. 1 seed Bearcats (22-8, 13-3 AE) avoided an upset against No. 9 Hartford (7-26, 2-14 AE).
Down 13 at the half, the Hawks had a 7-0 run to start the second period, bringing the score to 35-29. But the Bearcats countered with a 20-6 run, and Hartford never came closer than six points until garbage time.
Hartford made the end of the game interesting when it hit four 3-pointers in the final 30 seconds, two of which came from walk-on Clint Kuban. Binghamton was forced to pull its walk-ons for the final seconds to secure the win.
“We were just fortunate and lucky they didn’t have two more minutes on the clock the way they were making threes at the end,” said Binghamton head coach Kevin Broadus.
Binghamton’s D.J. Rivera struggled with his shooting and finished with 12 points, well below his season average of 20. But he pulled down 11 rebounds, three more than anyone else in the game.
“I always tell these guys that when you’re not scoring, you’ve got to pick up the slack somewhere else, and he did that,” Broadus said.
The Bearcats had a scare late in the second half when Emanuel “Tiki” Mayben fell to the ground after a collision and took several minutes to get up. Just minutes later, he emerged from the locker room and sprinted to the scorer’s table to sub back into the game.
“[Mayben] loves the attention,” Broadus joked.
Mayben, a native of Troy, N.Y., began the game by missing his first three shots, conjuring memories of his one-point outing the last time he played near his hometown. But he rebounded with one of his finest games of the season, finishing with 21 points, five assists and six rebounds. He shot three of five on 3-pointers and six of 12 overall.
With Mayben in the locker room treating his injury, and with D.J. Rivera struggling to score, Alvin picked up the slack and made his way to the free throw line 18 times, hitting 15.
Hartford’s Michael Turner had 20 points and seven rebounds, but turned the ball over on three straight possessions in the first half, giving Binghamton an opportunity to build an early lead.
“I think our undoing was a lack of composure, a lack of poise against their pressure, which is something we’re better at than we played today,” said Hartford coach Dan Leibovitz.
Reggie Fuller had an efficient seven points, eight rebounds, three blocks and two steals to spearhead Binghamton’s defensive effort.
In many ways the game seemed like a home game for BU, with hundreds of Binghamton students and community members making the trip to support the Bearcats. There were only a handful of Hartford fans in the gym, though some fans of other schools cheered on the Hawks as they attempted to give the tournament its fourth straight upset.
The Bearcats made it to the semifinals for just the third time in school history and the first time away from the Events Center.