NJIT Men's Basketball Gameday Center
 

Game 10	NJIT  (5-4) at St. Francis Brooklyn (3-5)
Date/Time	Thursday, December 10, 2015/ 7 pm
Location/Venue	Brooklyn Heights, NY/ The Pope Physical Education Center (1,200)
Live Video/Audio	Live streaming video: NEC Front Row, (www.sfcathletics.com)  Live audio: www.njithighlanders.com; Matt Provence (play-by-play)
Live Stats	In-game statistics (free)
Social Media	@njithighlanders
All-Time Series	St. Francis Brooklyn leads, 4-1 (last: NJIT won, 68-66, on Dec. 9, 2014)
Game Notes	NJIT notes / St. Francis Brooklyn notes

 
NJIT plays the first of three straight away games leading up to Christmas. The games will all take place in three boroughs of New York City, starting with St. Francis (Brooklyn), Columbia (Manhattan) on Saturday, Dec. 12, and St. John's (Queens) on Sunday, December 20.
 
Streaming coverage of the game at St. Francis is available on the websites of the two competing teams. Streaming TV coverage provided by NEC Front Row is on the St. Francis website (www.sfcathletics.com) as well as on www.necfrontrow.com.
 
Matt Provence, voice of the Highlanders, will have the audio call of the game live on the Highlander Sports Network, found on www.njithighlanders.com.
 
To access coverage at NJIT's official athletics website (www.njithighlanders.com), go near the middle of the home page and find the NJIT TV section. Click Upcoming Events for a list of scheduled NJIT contests. After finding the event, click the camera icon to the far right of the event listing. That links you to the NEC Front Row portal. For NJIT's audio webcast, find the speaker icon on the same row of the event listings and you will be connect to the Stretch Internet portal.
 
NJIT vs. ST. FRANCIS BROOKLYN THURSDAY NIGHT
This friendly rivalry will be contested for the sixth time, with all of the games having been played since 2010-11, which was the third season for NJIT under coach Jim Engles. St. Francis won the first four meetings, two in Brooklyn and two in Newark, before the Highlanders broke through with a thrilling 68-66 victory last season that came three days after the historic upset of #17/#16 Michigan by the Highlanders.
 
As it turned out, both teams would go on to have their best seasons in years and the two coaches, Engles of NJIT and Glenn Braica of St. Francis, would share the Peter A. Carlesimo Award, given annual to the Division I Coach of the Year in the NY/NJ/CT region by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association.
 
NJIT had a record-setting season, playing as the only Independent in Division I and winning 21 games, including three in the CollegeInsider.com postseason tournament (CIT). St. Francis tied their school record with 23 wins, captured its first Northeast Conference regular season title since 2003-04, and played in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). The NIT trip was the first postseason action beyond a conference tournament in 52 years.
 
A LOOK AT ST. FRANCIS (3-5)
St. Francis, which graduated 2014-15 NEC Player of the Year Jalen Cannon, among other key contributors from last year's championship team, got off to a 1-4 start, getting its only win vs. Division III Mount Saint Vincent. However, two of the losses came against teams from the elite Atlantic Coast Conference (Boston College and Louisville) and a third came against powerful Saint Louis, all on the road.
 
The fourth loss came on a neutral court against North Florida, the defending champion and current preseason favorite of NJIT's new conference, the Atlantic Sun.
 
Rebounding from the 1-4 start, the Terriers got on track with road wins at Hartford and at defending Patriot League champion Lafayette (69-62 on December 2; NJIT won at home against Lafayette 80-66 on November 21). After that, the Terriers took St. John's to the wire before losing 63-56 at Madison Square Garden on December 6.
 
Although the game against NJIT will be the ninth of the season for St. Francis, it will be the first Division I home game this season for the Terriers, who will unveil their NEC Championship banner before Thursday's game.
 
St. Francis Brooklyn team stats and leaders:
Scoring (team 63.4 ppg; -8.2 ppg): Tyreek Jewell (6-1, Sr; 10.8 ppg); Yunis Hopkinson (5-10, Jr; 10.1 ppg)
Rebounding (team 34.2 rpg; -4.6 rpg): Amdy Fall (6-7, Sr; 7.4 rpg); Chris Hooper (6-6, Sr; 5 rpg)
Assists: Glenn Sanabria (5-11, So; 19); Jewell (16)
Blocks: Fall (13); Hooper (12)
Steals: Fall (10)
3-pt FGM: Hopkinson (16)
 
A LOOK AT NJIT (5-4)
NJIT heads on the road with an eye on recovering from a hard-fought 80-75 home loss to a strong Kent State team on Monday night. The game was close all the way and Kent State pulled it out by scoring the game's last 5 points.
 
The loss was the first at home after four home wins to start the season. In fact, going back to mid-February 2015, NJIT had won 10 consecutive games on Fleisher Family Court before being edged by Kent State.
 
Now, the Highlanders will aim to improve on their 1-3 road record to begin the season (albeit two of the losses came against teams ranked in the national Top 25 and the third was against the 3-time defending champion of the America East Conference, UAlbany, by a single point).
 
NJIT team stats and leaders:
Scoring (team 76.7 ppg; +3.4 ppg): Damon Lynn (5-11 Jr; 18.2 ppg); Tim Coleman (6-5, Jr; 13.7 ppg); Ky Howard (6-4, Sr; 12 ppg); Winfield Willis (6-0, Sr; 10.3 ppg)
Rebounding (team 35 rpg; -0.3 rpg): Coleman (6.6 rpg); Howard (5.3 rpg);
Assists: Howard (34); Lynn (28); Willis (24)
Blocks: Vlad Shustov (6-9, So; 7); Coleman (6)
Steals: Coleman (16); Lynn (9); Howard (8); Willis (8)
3-pt FGM: Lynn (35)