The 2017 America East Basketball Tournament begins this week. Binghamton men’s basketball is ranked 7th in the conference and will square off against a strong Stony Brook side on Wednesday, while the 5th ranked women will face Maine in the first quarterfinals on Saturday.
The Binghamton men’s basketball team will now enter the AE Conference Tournament with the eighth seed, which pits it against No. 2 Stony Brook. Even though Binghamton defeated Stony Brook earlier this season, the Bearcats have a history of struggling against the Seawolves. Stony Brook has knocked BU out of the AE Championship in three of the last five years.
Tipoff of the AE Quarterfinal match is set for 7 p.m. from the Island Federal Credit Union Arena in Stony Brook, New York.
The Binghamton women’s basketball team is set to take on No. 4 Maine in the first round of tournament play. The Bearcats lost to Maine, 62-49, on Sunday to close out the regular season. In the rematch, the Bearcats will have to quiet AE All-Conference senior guard Sigi Koizar, who tallied 17 points in the teams’ most recent matchup and can be deadly from beyond the arc.
Tipoff is set for 2:30 p.m. on Saturday at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland, Maine. The game will be broadcast on ESPN 3.
In the team’s season opener against Cornell, redshirt junior guard Yosef Yacob stepped into a 3-pointer and drilled it. It marked his first bucket in over a year.
Yacob missed the entire 2015-16 season with a shoulder injury. After a long recovery process, he was thrilled to return to the court.
Junior forward Bobby Ahearn has always been tough. His muscular 6-foot-6-inch frame lends itself well to boxing out opponents and tracking down rebounds. But this season, Ahearn has added scoring to his toolbox.
For BU head coach Tommy Dempsey, the short drive from Binghamton to Scranton played a major role in his desire to move on from his previous job as the head coach at Rider.
In BU’s first three games of the season, Boland was on the court for an average of six minutes. In the Bearcats’ three most recent contests, she has averaged 21 minutes. According to Cimino, the increase in playing time has grown alongside the freshman’s confidence on the floor.
Senior forward Kristen Ross, sat in a courtside seat at the Event Center. She had just finished a midday practice and was being grilled about her best memory as a Bearcat. She chuckled for a second, but quickly settled on a particular moment.
Early in her career, Kai Moon struggled to find a team for girls her age. Instead, Moon joined the boys’ teams so she could play competitive basketball. According to Moon, her father played a big role in teaching her the discipline needed to improve.