Box score

NEWARK, NJ—NJIT seniors Ryan Woods and Chris Flores combined for 44 points Saturday afternoon, as the Highlanders clinched their first winning season at the Division I level with an 84-64 victory over visiting New Orleans in the Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center.
 
Woods, a wing forward, scored a game-high 23 points and Flores, a guard, added 21 points for NJIT, which upped its season record to 15-11 after the non-conference win. PJ Miller, the senior point guard for the Highlanders, chipped in with 15 points, matching his career high, which also came against UNO on January 21 in New Orleans.
 
The Highlanders, who began Division I competition in 2006-07, have two regular season games left on the 2012-13 schedule before they go to the Great West Conference Tournament at Chicago State (March 14 to 16). With 15 wins already in the books, NJIT can not lose more than 14 this season.
 
NJIT, which has reached the 15-win mark for a third straight season (15-15 in 2010-11; 15-17 in 2011-12), is 11-3 at home and now has a season-best four-game winning streak.
 
New Orleans (8-16) had three double-figure scorers on Saturday, topped by a career-high 18 points off the bench from freshman swingman Evans Ganapamo, who did it all on 6-for-11 shooting from beyond the 3-point arc.

Junior Traddarius McPhearson scored 14 points for the Privateers and senior Lovell Cook added 11. Both veterans had scored their career highs in a wild 96-94 triple overtime win against NJIT on January 21 in New Orleans. Cook, who averages a team-best 15 points per game this season, netted 32 the first time he saw the Highlanders and McPhearson scored 16 against NJIT the first time around in the home-and-home series.

UNO, 0-11 in away games with this loss, was led on the boards by junior Cory Dixon's six rebounds in 27 minutes off the bench.
 
The victorious Highlanders received game-high totals in rebounds (11) and blocked shots (4) off the bench from Odera Nweke against UNO. Both totals were new personal highs for the sophomore. Also stellar off the NJIT bench were freshman Ky Howard (9 points, 8 rebounds, career-high 7 assists) and junior big man Quentin Bastian (7 rebounds, 4 points in 15 minutes).

In addition to Howard's seven assists, NJIT also got six from Flores, while four Highlanders—Woods, Flores, Miller, and Daquan Holiday—made two steals each.
 
New Orleans point guard Rarlensee Nelson, who came in ranked ninth in the nation at 6.9 assists a game, shared game honors with a team-best seven assists on Saturday. But the senior also turned the ball over six times for the Privateers, contributing to NJIT's 18-11 advantage in points off turnovers.
 
In addition to the points off turnovers advantage, NJIT dominated two other specialty stats, outscoring New Orleans in the paint, 38-12, and 15-4 on the fast break. New Orleans had a 33-22 lead in bench scoring, mostly on the strength of Ganapamo's team-best 18 points.
 
With the teams having needed three overtime periods to decide a winner by two points when they played just over a month earlier in New Orleans, the rematch was close in the early going, with two ties and five lead changes through the first 11 minutes. NJIT held a pair of three-point leads in the opening seven minutes and New Orleans took what would be its biggest lead, 14-11, on Ganapamo's triple with 12:15 remaining in the half.
 
The Privateers were on top,17-15, after another Ganapamo three at the 10:13 mark, but NJIT took control from there, outscoring the visitors, 25-6, en route to a 40-23 halftime advantage. The Highlanders answered the 17-15 deficit with an 8-0 run in a span of 2:04 that included five points for Miller. Ganapamo interrupted the NJIT rally with another three, but then the Highlanders ran off 13 points in 2:39, capped by back-to-back 3-pointers in 26 seconds, first from Woods and then from Flores, pushing the Highlanders' bulge to 38-20 with 3:30 left in the half.
 
The halftime score sheet showed NJIT with a 40-23 lead, as Woods scored 11, Flores scored nine, and Miller scored seven. To go with 15-for-29 shooting from the field, NJIT held a 22-11 rebounding advantage in the half, led by six boards for the freshman guard Howard.
 
Ganapamo, who made three of his threes in the first half, led UNO at the break with nine points. Perhaps more important than the fact that Ganapamo topped the Privateers in scoring was the fact that it wasn't Cook, who had scored 32 in the first game vs. NJIT. In the rematch, the normally explosive senior was limited to four points in playing 16 first-half minutes.
 
Cook opened the second half with a layup, triggering an opening 7-0 spurt for the Privateers, who trimmed the NJIT lead to 12 points, 42-30, with 18:15 remaining.
 
However, Flores and Miller went to work, answering the threat with back-to-back layups and pushing the score to 46-30 just 31 seconds after UNO had whittled its deficit to 12 points.
 
The Highlanders stretched their lead to 20 points, 57-37, on a pair of free throws by freshman Nigel Sydnor with 13:55 remaining and they built their biggest advantage of the day (27 points), when Howard completed a traditional 3-point play to make it 66-39 three seconds past the mid-point of the second half.
 
New Orleans, which made 6-of-13 second-half 3-point tries and also shot 7-for-10 at the foul line after going a dismal 1-for-5 there in the first half, eventually trimmed the NJIT lead down to 15 points on three separate occasions in the final 5:42. But the Privateers could get no closer and NJIT scored the game's last four points for the 20-point winning margin, their largest this season against a Division I opponent (previously was 19 points, 77-58, at Colgate on February 6).  
 
Earlier on Saturday, nearly 20 former Highlanders took part in the annual Alumni Game before the NJIT-New Orleans matchup.

With six alumni 1,000-point career scorers in attendance, Flores raised his career scoring total to 1,682, which is fifth on the all-time list. Woods, who connected on 5-for-7 from downtown, raised his season 3-point total to 81, which is third-best in program history, trailing only Clarence Pierce (84 in 1994-95 when NJIT reached the NCAA Division III Elite Eight) and Mars Mellish (82 in 2001-02 when NJIT was in the fifth of its nine seasons in Division II). Woods is shooting 42.2 percent (81-192) from distance this season.
 
NJIT, which has thrived playing one game a week since February 9, will continue with its fourth consecutive Saturday game, hosting Houston Baptist in a Great West Conference game on March 2 at 4 pm. That game, the home finale will be preceded by Senior Day ceremonies marking the final home gamesfor Flores, Woods, Miller, and starting center Sean McCarthy.
 
Houston Baptist, which has won seven straight after a 73-63 home conference win against Utah Valley on February 23, is the only GWC team to beat the Highlanders (5-1 in the GWC) this season.

That game, the third in the current HBU winning streak, saw the Huskies (now 3-3 in the GWC) top NJIT, 66-57 on February 2 in Houston.

Texas-Pan American won Saturday's other GWC game at Chicago State, mathematically eliminating CSU (2-4 GWC) from finishing in a tie with the front-running Highlanders, while also keeping UTPA (3-3) alive in its bid to tie NJIT. The Highlanders which will follow next week's home game vs. HBU with a March 9 game at Texas-Pan Am.