IT’S A CLINCH!
Broncs say bring on Albany after securing MAAC’s No. 1 seed
LAWRENCEVILLE » Rider’s path to the No. 1 seed in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament was simple.
Just Win. No scoreboard watching. Take care of business at home and head to Albany next weekend as the regularseason champion.
Dimencio Vaughn led five players in double figures with 26 points and the Broncs clinched the top seed with a 110-101 victory over Iona at Alumni Gymnasium on Sunday afternoon.
“Our biggest goal is to go up to Albany and cut those nets down this next week coming up,” head coach Kevin Baggett said. “This is one box we wanted to check along the way. We’ve had goals all year long, and these guys are able to check those boxes and achieve the things we talked about.”
Rider (22-8, 15-3) would have won the league title outright had Canisius not beat Marist as well on Sunday. The Golden Griffins (21-10, 15-3) settled for the No. 2 seed since the Broncs held the tiebreaker.
Rider guaranteed itself an NIT bid should it not win the conference tournament next weekend in Albany. The Broncs play with winner of the firstround game between eighth-seeded Monmouth and ninth-seeded Saint Peter’s.
“It’s everything, but it’s also just a start of what we can do,” junior guard Kealen Washington-Ives said. “It’s rewarding to get that after we worked so hard this season and everything we’ve been through with ups and downs, good times and bad. To win that for the school and all of our fans and the Rider community that’s really big for us.”
The Broncs are the No. 1 seed for the second time since joining the conference 21 years ago and first time in 16 years. The top seed, however, hasn’t been a position of strength in the wacky MAAC. In fact, the school in the No. 1 position hasn’t won the conference tournament since 2010 and has cut down the nets in only 14 of 36 tournaments (38.8 percent).
“This team is tough, really tough,” Vaughn said. “We don’t give in to nobody. That’s just not us. Moments like this, for teams like us, we take advantage of it. We don’t celebrate it and be happy with it. We want more, we’re hungry. We want to prove something.”
Tyere Marshall added 19 points and 16 rebounds, Anthony Durham had 17 and Washington-Ives and Frederick Scott totaled 15 each.
Washington-Ives scored all 15 of his points in the first half, including a scintillating final 1:20 in which he tallied Rider’s last eight points to give it a 57-40 edge at intermission.
“That was my best stretch here at Rider,” Washington-Ives said. “It was better for me because it was for my team and helped my team win.”
Washington-Ives credited a meeting the team had following Thursday’s loss at Monmouth.
“Whether you get two minutes, one minute or 30 seconds just go out there and play as hard as you can and give us something whether it’s a charge, a blocked shot, a shot made,” he said. “Whatever it is, give everything you got to the team, so that’s what I wanted to establish when I got on the court.”
The Broncs improved to 10-0 in games in which they score at least 90 points. They went 9-0 at home in conference play and 12-1 overall.
The 110 points were the highest output since scoring 112 against Quinnipiac in February of last year. Rider had 91 points with over nine minutes remaining.
Rickey McGill netted a career-high 40 points for the Gaels (17-13, 11-7), who are the No. 4 seed and a potential semifinal opponent.
Iona, despite trailing by 26 with 8:50 remaining, cut a significant portion of that deficit in those last eight minutes.
“I’ll take a little bit of (the blame), too, because I was trying to make sure we took care of the clock,”
Baggett said. “The clock was on our side, (but) along with that, you take away some of our aggressiveness and we allowed them to go downhill at us.”
So, yes, Rider had to sweat it little more than it should have, but now it’s on to Albany with three wins to go.
“We just have to keep pushing through to prove our point,” Vaughn said. “We’re not going to back down.”