Mann has close ties to UConn program
STORRS — Dan Hurley thought he had a pretty good chance of recruiting Terance Mann to play at Rhode Island a few years ago.
Mann’s mother, Daynia La-Force, had just been hired as URI’s head women’s basketball coach, so Hurley figured Mann might want to join mom in the Ocean State.
“We thought we had a real chance at him,” said Hurley, who coached at URI for six seasons before taking over at UConn this season. “Then, we didn’t make his Top 5 list.”
Indeed, Mann’s star rose over his final year at Tilton School, and the likes of Florida State, Indiana, Boston College, Iowa, Maryland, Florida and West Virginia started coming after him.
“At the end of the day, I wanted to be away from home,” said Mann, who grew up in Lowell, Mass. “I think Hurley knew that.”
He wound up at Florida State, and on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., Mann will go up against Hurley for the first time as a collegian when No. 11 Florida State faces UConn in the Never Forget Tribute Classic.
“I spent a lot of time with Terance, he was always working out at (URI’s Ryan Center), always playing pick-up with our guys,” Hurley recalled. “I think he’s one of the best allaround perimeter people/ hyrid players that we’ll play against this year.”
Mann, a 6-foot-7 senior, leads the Seminoles’ wellbalanced scoring attack at 11.1 points per game, and is also the team’s top rebounder at 7.3 per contest.
When he takes the floor against the Huskies on Saturday, he’ll not only be going up against his mom’s former co-worker, but also one of his best friends. Jalen Adams, UConn’s top scorer, has been tight with Mann since the two were in high school. Adams, who is a year older than Mann, played in the Boston Amateur Basketball Club briefly with Mann before moving over to play for Mass Rivals. The two went up against each other numerous times in AAU and in high school, when Mann was at Tilton and Adams was at Cushing Academy, then Brewster Academy.
In AAU, as Mann recalls, the teams split in their two head-to-head meetings. But in prep school, Adams seemed to always get the better of Mann’s teams.
“His team was always stacked,” Mann noted.
Now, the tables are a bit turned. Florida State (7-1) is one of the very best teams in the country, with wins over Florida, LSU and Purdue and a loss only to defending national champ Villanova. And the Seminoles, who return seven of their top nine scorers from last year’s Elite Eight squad, have been without last year’s top scorer, Phil Cofer, who’s been out with a foot injury.
UConn is trying to take that next step up, seeking to knock off a ranked team for the first time in nearly three years.
“I definitely got the best of him in high school, but their team is really good,” Adams said after the Huskies’ blowout win over Lafayette on Wednesday, “and he’s been playing really well this year and since he’s been in college. We’ve got to get back to work and prep for Florida State.”
La-Force and Hurley had a good relationship while both were at URI, sometimes sitting in on each others’ practices.
“I’ve always admired how hard the guys practiced, and how organized his practices were,” said La-Force, whose Rams were 5-2 heading into a Thursday night bout at Kentucky. “And just how much effort and energy the guys performed with in practice. It’s the same effort and energy you see in the basketball game. With Coach Hurley, there was no differences in practices and games.”
The summer after his freshman year at UConn, Adams spent a couple of days at Mann’s home in Rhode Island. They still communicate frequently via text or social media, and there has been some trashtalking about Saturday’s game lately.
“It’ll be fun,” Adams promised. “We haven’t played against each other since AAU, high school days. I’m sure it’ll be competitive.”
Mann said he wished he would have been recruited by UConn, but never really was. He has been at a UConn game, however — a UConn women’s game at Gampel, when his mom was an assistant at Northeastern.
Needless to say, Mann hopes his team fares better against the Huskies than that Northeastern team did several years back.
“It’s definitely gonna be an amazing experience, to be in an atmosphere like that,” he said.
Mann is also just 11 points shy of his 1,000th career point. What better way to reach that milestone than against a couple of old friends? players than us. But not on the day we played them. We deserved to win.”
The Bridgeport roster includes three from Connecticut, seven from Sweden, four from U.K., three from Brazil, two from Norway and one from South Africa and Netherlands. Maegen Doyle of Harwich, England, scored a schoolrecord 28 goals. Goalkeeper Jennifer Wendelius, of Lidingo, Sweden, would be Most Outstanding Defensive Player at the Final Four. They are both Academic All-Americans.
“You have so many different cultural and regional backgrounds, it’s amazing how close they get,” Nilerud said. “But there’s a common language, and no matter if they come from Seattle or Stockholm, they’ve got the same goals in soccer and in the classroom.”
Remember the 19-0 game? The Purple Knights would beat St. Rose in the second round of the 48-team NCAA Tournament. They’d beat LIU Post and host Bloomsburg St. to advance to the national semifinals for the second time in four years. They would beat UC San Diego, 2-0, on goals by
Sparked by a sensational group of six players, the Brunswick School football team shared the Erickson League title and played in their first NEPSAC Class A champioship bowl game since 2014.
Recently, those six standout players received NEPSAC and Erickson League honors. Senior co-captain Cornelius Johnson, earned the Erickson League’s CoOffensive Player of the Year honors and was also an All-New England Team selection.
Fellow senior and cocaptain Nick Villis joins Johnson on the All-Erickson League team, along with senior David MacGillivray and juniors Howard Powell, Jalen Madison and Aengus Rosato.
Additionally, Johnson, Villis and Powell each earned spots on the NEPSAC’s All-New England Class A First Team, while MacGillivray was an honorable mention All-New England pick.
Johnson, a three-time all-league selection as a receiver, is the Erickson League’s Co-Offensive Player of the Year. He finished the season with careerhighs in receptions (50), receiving yards (826) and matched his season-best total in touchdown receptions (12). Johnson finished the year with 1,080 all-purpose yards, including a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and a 32-yard rushing touchdown this season. Over his four-year varsity career, Johnson amassed 129 receptions, 33 touchdown catches and 2,167 receiving yards.
It is the third-straight
Amanda Ebbesson and Doyle. Only Grand Valley St. remained.
“We take a trip every year to kind of mimic what a Final Four would look like,” Nilerud said. “This year happened to be Grand Valley. My wife said, ‘You’re absolutely off your rocker, going out there.’” Sharon was right. “We were handsomely beat,” Nilerud said. “It was 6-0. If it had been 15-0, I wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.”
But, now, it was different. Lakers coach Jeff Hosler, whose No. 1 team was 25-0-1, had the challenge of convincing his players this would not be a rout. Nilerud had a game plan. Stay organized. Stay compact. And while they were outshot, 18-5, and Grand Valley had a 11-3 advantage in corner kicks, the defense and Wendelius stood tall.
“I had told them, ‘You play Grand Valley, you’d probably lose eight or nine of 10. But today is not eight or nine,’ ” Nilerud said.
Not Saturday. Not at Highmark Stadium. With a little more than 12 minutes remaining, Elin Eklund’s shot beat Grand Valley’s Jessica season a Brunswick player earned the Erickson League’s Offensive Player of the Year Award. Nick Henkel, a 2018 graduate, who is playing at Yale University, earned the award in 2016 and 2017.
Villis, also an all-league linebacker for the Bruins a year ago, led the team with 106 tackles, while adding 10 tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and an interception. He registered a season-high 16 tackles during a physical win over Cheshire Academy and totaled 10 or more tackles in seven of the squad’s 10 games. Over three seasons, Villis posted 284 career tackles, 25 tackles of which resulted in lost yardage.
Powell, a defensive lineman, totaled 60 total tackles, three sacks and a safety. In the NEPSAC Championship against Choate Rosemary Hall, Powell registered 10 tackles, a sack and a fumble recovery. Additionally, Powell was a two-way player for the Bruins, playing offensive guard.
MacGillivray collected 63 tackles from his linebacker spot this past season. The senior posted a team-high 12.5 tackles for a loss and grabbed three interceptions.
Madison rushed for a team-high 774 yards on 111 carries (6.97 yards per carry) in eight games. The running back posted a season-best 215 yards on 28 carries with four touchdowns in a 33-26 win over Taft School. He ranked third on the team in receiving yards with 112.
Rosato recorded a careerbest 52 tackles and a teamhigh four sacks from his defensive end position. He collected a personal-best 11 tackles in a victory against Cheshire Academy.
Radice, but hit the crossbar. Nara DaCosta was there to head in the game’s only goal.
“You couldn’t have written a better script,” Nilerud said. “It was fantastic.”
So here was the team bus crossing into Greenwich on I-95 Sunday. Nilerud let the bus driver in on the secret, so he wouldn’t pull over in a panic. The state police began its escort.
“The kids had no clue,” Nilerud said. “We get off Exit 25 in Bridgeport, the state police are waving us on, they started to pick up on it. The kids are like why are we getting off here? The bus driver said, ‘My wife called and I’ve got to pick up milk.’ ”
They pulled into the Stop & Shop on Fairfield Avenue. There were four police cars, lights flashing, with Mayor Ganim waiting to get on the bus to say a few words.
The bus headed for campus, sirens blaring, running red lights.
The journey Magnus Nilerud started in 1999 was complete. Bridgeport had its national champions.