NJIT Men's Basketball Gameday Center
 

Game 13	Stony Brook (7-4) at NJIT (7-5)
Date/Time	Monday, December 28, 2015/ 7 pm
Location/Venue	Newark, NJ/ Estelle and Zoom Fleisher Athletic Center (1,500)
Live Video/Audio	ESPN3 streaming telecast (WatchESPN app., www.watchespn.com)  Matt Provence (play-by-play); Rob Kennedy (color)
Live Stats	In-game statistics (free)
Social Media	@njithighlanders
All-Time Series	SBU leads 11-5 (4-0 in DI) (last: SBU won, 60-46 on Nov. 28, 2009)
Game Notes	NJIT notes / Stony Brook notes

 
BUY TICKETS ONLINE AT NJITTIX.COM
 
The game will be shown live on ESPN3 (all remaining home men's basketball games and all Atlantic Sun Conference away games will be live on ESPN3)
 
Matt Provence, voice of the Highlanders, is on play-by-play and Rob Kennedy is on board to provide expert commentary.
 
A simple way to find ESPN3 is on NJIT's official athletics website, www.njithighlanders.com. Near the middle of the home page NJIT TV section, click Upcoming Events for a list of scheduled NJIT contests. After finding the event, click the camera icon to the right of the event listing. That brings you to an ESPN3 portal where you can access the desired program.
 
For more details on how to watch NJIT on ESPN3, go to the section at the bottom of this page.
 
TASTY HOLIDAY TREAT FOR NJIT HOOPS FANS
Away since December 7, NJIT returns to Newark for the final home game on the 2015 calendar. And the matchup is a tasty holiday offering, pitting two of the top Division I teams in the New Jersey/New York area, with Stony Brook coming in from Long Island to challenge the Highlanders.
 
Both teams are top contenders in their respective conferences, NJIT in the Atlantic Sun and Stony Brook in the America East.
 
Both head coaches are rising stars in their profession. Jim Engles of the Highlanders has garnered multiple Coach of the Year awards since 2013, including 2015, when he was co-recipient of the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association Peter A. Carlesimo Coach of the Year as the area's top Division I men's coach. Steve Pikiell of Stony Brook won the Carlesimo Coach of the Year in both 2010 and 2013.
 
Coincidentally, the NJIT-Stony Brook game will bring together two players who shared the most recent  Met Basketball Writers' Division I Player of the Week. NJIT's Damon Lynn shared the award with Stony Brook senior big man Jameel Warney. Both men were also honored last season with honorable mention on the Associated Press All-America team.
 
STONY BROOK (7-4) at NJIT (7-5) MONDAY at 7 pm
This is a rare series in that it renews a basketball rivalry that began when NJIT competed at the NCAA Division III level. In fact, both NJIT and Stony Brook were founding members of the Division III Skyline Conference that began play in 1989-90 and they faced off 12 times as Division III programs (Stony Brook won 7 and NJIT won 5).
 
Stony Brook began Division I competition in 1999 and NJIT began playing at the top level in 2006 and the programs met once in each of NJIT's first four Division I seasons. The Seawolves have won all four DI contests, most recently in 2009-10 (SBU, 60-46 on Nov. 28, 2009).
 
The Seawolves went on to a 22-10 record that season and they have won at least 22 games in all but one season since (15-17 in 2010-11).
 
The man in charge in all those seasons, indeed since 2005-06, has been Steve Pikiell, who took over a program that went 4-24 in his first season, but which has been in national postseason play in five of the past six years (3 in the NIT; 2 in the CBI).
 
The biggest prize that has eluded Stony Brook is an America East Tournament championship and the NCAA Tournament berth that goes with it. Stony Brook has reached the America East championship game four times in the last five seasons, but lost each time, including 51-50 last March against UAlbany.
 
This season, the Seawolves were picked as the favorites to win the America East in the conference preseason coaches' poll.
 
Stony Brook is 7-4, with wins in each of its last three games, most recently 75-62 at Lehigh on December 22.
 
The key SBU player is 6-foot-8, 260-pound senior Jameel Warney, who was America East Conference Player of the Year following both his sophomore and junior years and is the odds-on favorite to three-peat this year.
 
Warney, an NBA power forward prospect, is averaging 20 points and 10.9 rebounds through 11 games this season. The product of Plainfield, NJ, and Roselle Catholic HS has 1,697 career points and 1,038 career rebounds in college.
 
While Warney is the ace, Stony Brook has other excellent players, with three other men averaging at least 8 points per game and tremendous team rebounding at plus-10.5 rebounds per game.
 
Senior Carson Puriefoy, who is from South Jersey, is one of the America East's top guards and is coming off a 25-point game at Lehigh. Long Islander Ahmad Walker is back at Stony Brook after spending his sophomore year at Barton County Community College in Kansas and he leads SBU in assists, while also scoring better than 10 ppg.
 
Stony Brook team stats and leaders:
Scoring (team 77.6 ppg; +12.2 ppg): Jameel Warney (6-8, Sr; 20 ppg); Carson Puriefoy (6-0, Sr; 13.7 ppg); Ahmad Walker (6-4, Jr; 10.5 ppg); Rayshaun McGrew (6-7, Sr; 9.2 ppg); Bryan Sekunda (6-6, So; 8 ppg)
Rebounding (team 42.1 rpg; +10.5 rpg): Warney (10.9 rpg); Walker (6.4 rpg); Tyrell Sturdivant (6-7, So; 5.2 rpg); McGrew (5.1 rpg)
Assists: Walker (61)
Blocks: Warney (39)
Steals: Puriefoy (14); Warney (13); Walker (13)
3-pt FGM: Puriefoy (27)
 
Quiet time is over
NJIT has played just once since December 12, but it was memorable. On December 20, the Highlanders went to St. John's and scored their first-ever victory over a team from the vaunted BIG EAST Conference.  
 
After hosting Stony Brook, NJIT will take its longest bus trip of the season, visiting Saint Francis in Loretto, PA, more than 280 miles to the west of Newark, on December 30. On January 2, the Highlanders will entertain UMBC and they'll close out the non-conference schedule at Yale on January 6.
 
After that comes NJIT plays its inaugural season as a member of the Atlantic Sun Conference, with 14 A-Sun games from Jan. 9 (home vs. USC Upstate) through Feb. 25 (at USC Upstate). The A-Sun Tournament held at campus sites, follows from March 1 to March 6, with the A-Sun Tournament winner going to the NCAA Tournament.
 
A LOOK AT NJIT (7-5)
NJIT is off to its best 12-game start since beginning Division I competition in 2006-07, a fact that is made even more impressive by the quality of opponents. Seven of the seven of the 12 games have been against teams that made postseason tournaments in 2015 (Stony Brook will make it 8 of 13; NJIT is 3-4 against 2015 postseason qualifiers, including the victory at 2015 NCAA Tournament participant St. John's in the last game).
 
NJIT team stats and leaders:
Scoring (team 76.8 ppg; +3 ppg): Damon Lynn (5-11 Jr; 18.5 ppg); Ky Howard (6-4, Sr; 14.2 ppg); Tim Coleman (6-5, Jr; 13.6 ppg)  
Rebounding (team 35.4 rpg; -2.9 rpg): Coleman (7.7 rpg); Howard (5.6 rpg);
Assists: Howard (55); Lynn (36)
Blocks: Coleman (10); Vlad Shustov (6-9, So; 8)
Steals: Coleman (20); Howard (13); Lynn (13)
3-pt FGM: Lynn (44)
 
How to watch NJIT sports programming on ESPN3
ESPN3 is the live platform for at least 23 NJIT men's basketball games this season.
 
Starting in January, every NJIT game played in the Atlantic Sun Conference, home and away, throughout the regular season and into the A-Sun postseason tournament will be covered on ESPN3.  Before that, NJIT and ESPN3 will offer live coverage of every remaining men's basketball non-conference home game.
 
ESPN3 is ESPN's live multi-screen sports network.  It is accessible online at WatchESPN.com, on smartphones and tablets via the WatchESPN app and streamed on televisions through Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. 
 
The network is currently available to more than 99 million homes at no additional cost to fans who receive their high-speed Internet connection or video subscription from an affiliated service provider. 
 
ESPN3 is also available at no cost to approximately 21 million U.S. college students and U.S.-based military personnel via computers, smartphones and tablets connected to on-campus educational and on-base military broadband and Wi-Fi networks. That means devices served by NJIT's on-campus computer network can link directly to ESPN3.
 
Others can access ESPN3 through WatchESPN if they receive ESPN programming from an affiliated service provider. Those users need to provide the username and password they use in online communication with their regular service provider (can usually be found on regular billing material from the service provider).
 
Here is a link to Frequently Asked Questions about WatchESPN.