Game Highlights (Video)

Tselentakis, Ukawuba Postgame Comments (Video)


NEWARK, NJ—NJIT dominated Maine Fort Kent in virtually every aspect of their men's basketball game Sunday afternoon in the Fleisher Athletic Center, downing the visiting Bengals 89-60.
 
The victory returns the Highlanders to the winning side after they had dropped their previous two games earlier in the week. NJIT, 4-3 after playing its first seven games in a span of 16 days, will have a chance to rest a bit, returning to action on Saturday, December 5 at 4 pm in the Fleisher Athletic Center against UMass Lowell.
 
Maine Fort Kent, which has been one of the busiest college basketball teams at any level, fell to 5-7 with the loss against NJIT. The Bengals, who play as part of the small-college United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA), gave a determined effort in their only game against an NCAA Division I opponent.
 
The Highlanders had the game well in hand by halftime, with a 47-21 lead through 20 minutes and four of the game starters for NJIT played 10 minutes or less for the Highlanders in the second half.
 
The exception was senior Emmanuel Tselentakis, making his first start of the season, who played 9 minutes in the opening half and 18 in the second half, for a team-high 27 minutes played.
 
NJIT's two leading scorers in the game, Tim Coleman (21 points) and Damon Lynn (15) played a combined 10 minutes in the second half.
 
Coleman, who repeatedly got to the rim, shot 7-for-11 from the field and 7-for-8 at the foul line, while also grabbing a game-high 9 rebounds to go with 3 assists and 2 blocked shots in his 23 minutes of action.
 
Lynn, one of the premier 3-point shooters in college basketball, got his 15 points in 19 minutes on 5-for-10 shooting from downtown. Lynn, who was second nationally in 3-point baskets last season (school-record 126) has made 29 3-pointers in seven games this season.
 
Tselentakis, who took the starting lineup spot of Ky Howard, who was in shirt-and-tie in the wake of absorbing a hard blow Friday night at UAlbany, posted a quality line in his first start of the season with 10 points (4-for-4 shooting, 2-for-2 on threes), 5 rebounds, a game-high 5 assists with one turnover and a game-high 4 steals.
 
Junior Rob Ukawuba gave NJIT another strong performance off the bench, scoring 10 points, with 4 rebounds, 4 assists, no turnovers, and 4 steals in 24 minutes. Vlad Shustov, the 6-foot-9 sophomore, came off the bench for a career-high 7 rebounds and career best-matching 3 blocked shots.
 
Maine Fort Kent had three double-figure scorers, led by sophomore guard Jake Rioux, who scored 16 on the strength of his 3-point shooting. He was 4-for-8 from beyond the arc and also made 2-of-3 free throws awarded when fouled on a 3-point try. He also made a two-point bucket.
 
Junior point guard Qaadir Ali added 15 points for the Bengals, while also contributing UMFK highs in assists (5) and steals (3), and junior Lowell Hall chipped in with 10 points.
 
Joe McCloskey, Maine Fort Kent's USCAA All-American junior center, who came in averaging 22 points per game, was limited to 8 points on Sunday, but he led his 5 rebounds paced the Bengals.
 
Being located in Fort Kent at the northernmost point of the eastern United States near the US-Canadian border, UMFK faces some unusual challenges in its schedule, with long road trips and games condensed into a few days. Sunday's outing for the Bengals was their third game in three days, preceded by a tournament in Boston on Friday and Saturday.
 
Nonetheless, Maine Fort Kent came out playing hard, as both teams made "effort" plays such as diving to the floor to recover loose balls and taking charges on defense.
 
NJIT's Tselentakis made a jump shot on the first shot of the game, but Maine Fort Kent came back to score the next four points, as McCloskey and Ali each made jumpers.
 
Down 4-2, the Highlanders rattled off 12 straight points for a 14-4 lead following Shustov's layup with 14:35 left in the first half.
 
UMFK whittled the deficit under 10 points a few more times, but NJIT's Lynn fired in a 3-pointer that made the score 27-16 with 8:39 remaining in the opening half and the Highlanders led by double-digits the rest of the afternoon, going up 47-21 after Lynn hit another three a couple of seconds before the first-half horn.
 
The Highlanders remained in complete control throughout the second half and took a 32-point lead, 57-25, when Lynn connected for another 3-pointer with 18:35 on the clock.
 
The bulge between the teams got as small as 26 points after UMFK's Rioux made deep 3-pointers on back-to-back possessions. But NJIT later took what would be its biggest lead, 86-50, on Seth Callahan's 3-pointer with 2:41 remaining.
 
Callahan, a freshman who scored over 1,500 points in high school in Wilkes-Barre, PA, had played a total of 3 minutes in two games before Sunday. He came in early in the second half against Maine Fort Kent and logged 12 minutes, seeing time at point guard and making all three of his shots, including a pair of nothing-but-net 3-pointers, one from the corner and one from the top of the key.
 
In all, six different Highlanders made 3-point baskets on Sunday, as Lynn (5); Tselentakis, Chris Jenkins, and Callahan (all with 2 each); and, Ukawuba (1) combined for 13 treys, as NJIT made a baker's dozen threes for the second game in a row.
 
Notes
--NJIT won its 100th game since beginning Division I competition in 2006-07. Jim Engles, early in his eighth year as head coach of the Highlanders, has 95 of those wins.

--NJIT's next opponent, UMass Lowell, has been something of a nemesis for the Highlanders the last two seasons.
 
The River Hawks, who are in their third season of NCAA Division I reclassification after years as a force in Division II, have played the Highlanders four times since November 2013 (they will meet once this season after playing home-and-home in 2013-14 and 2014-15).
 
NJIT won the first game in 2013 at home, 55-44, but UMass Lowell scored a 73-64 win on a snowy day in Massachusetts in early February 2014. Last season, the River Hawks pulled out a pair of November/December wins, beating the Highlanders in Newark, 63-61, and in Lowell, 71-67.
 
The 4-point loss in Lowell took place on December 3, 2014, but three days later, after a long bus ride back to New Jersey and a plane flight to Detroit, NJIT scored the biggest win in program history, a 72-70 signature triumph in Ann Arbor over #17/#16 Michigan that gained national attention and transformed  public perception of the Highlanders.
 
--Nomadic Maine Fort Kent will play its next four games in upstate New York, opening a five-games-in-six-days stretch in Buffalo on Wednesday. The trip ends on December 7 in Nashua, NH. And Nashua is a 7-hour drive from Fort Kent.