Keene State men’s basketball not only celebrated a victory on Saturday, Feb 17, but also celebrated their senior players.
Senior Day honored the accomplishments of members and their Student Assistant Coach Nicholas Napolitano.
The Owls yanked the chain of the Rhode Island College Anchormen and defeated them 88-59.
The first half of the game had the Owls behind for a short amount of time as Nate Siow made a three-point shot with the Owls first possession, followed by a layup from Jeff Hunter to make it a score of 9-2 with Keene State in the lead.
4:46 in, KSC made it to the double digits courtesy of Alonzo Linton. From this point on, the Owls kept a 10-plus point lead between them and the Anchormen.
Hunter, Octavio Brito, Spencer Aronson, Siow and Jean Baptiste worked together to give themselves a 20 point lead over the Anchormen with a score of 46-27 by the end of the first half. Siow scored a game-high 12 points during this quarter.
The Anchormen dug themselves deeper into the sand during the second half of the game as they were not able to shorten the gap.
The Owls were in the lead 52-32 until the combination of Hunter’s dunk and Wesley Odiase’s layup made the score go up to 61-35 at the 13:02 mark. Brito effortlessly shot a three-pointer, making the gap a whopping 30 points.
Keene State had a 31 point gap three times in the second half of the game and the Anchormen were never able to catch up, giving The Owls their 10th straight win against them.
The Owls are set to continue fighting in the LEC semi-finals Thursday, Feb. 22, at 7 p.m. in the Spaulding Gymnasium.
Nicole Dumont can be contacted at
ndumont@kscequinox.com
NICOLE DUMONT / ADMINISTRATIVE EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Keene State honored three seniors on the women’s side on their Senior night and ended their regular season where they played against the Rhode Island College Anchormans. Seniors Jackie Alibrandi, Katie Sullican and their student manager Kalie Moynihan were all recognized before the game as they played the undefeated, number one seed in the LEC conference. Rhode Island college was also ranked No. 3 on D3hoops.com on Feb. 12.
Senior Albibrandi, after suffering from an injury, started off scoring the first points for the Owls, as a send off from her team. After that, the Owls tried their best, but Rhode Island college made basket after basket, ending the first quarter with a score of 21-12 RIC. This continued throughout the rest of the quarters where the Anchormen would score almost twice as much as the Owls would in each quarter. By halftime the score was 29-23.
For the Owls the head scorer was freshman Brynn Rautiola who scored 17 points against the Anchormen, followed by sophomore Valerie Luizzi who closely followed with 15. It was announced on Feb. 20 on the Keene State Owls Athletics instagram page that Rautiola was 12 points away from the Keene State Women’s Basketball single season scoring record and she also has the highest Little East Conference points for the 2023-2024 season.
The game ended with a score of 91-51 RIC.
Molly Lu McKellar can be contacted at
mmckellar@kscequinox.com
