The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Quinnipiac lands Falzon
Former Northwestern starter Aaron Falzon is joining the Quinnipiac men’s basketball program as a graduate transfer.
Falzon will be eligible to play for the Bobcats in the 2019-20 season. The 6foot-8 forward appeared in 80 games at Northwestern, starting 43 over four years.
“For me, with one year left to play, I wanted to go where I could play a real big role on a team that had a chance to win their conference, make the tournament and be on a winning team with guys that play the right way,” Falzon said Monday afternoon by phone. “And I really like Coach (Baker) Dunleavy. We’ve had a great relationship over the course of the last month.”
The Newton, Mass., native was a four-star recruit out of Northfield Mount Hermon, ranked as the 75th best prospect in the Class of 2015 by ESPN. He visited Hawaii and Siena along with Quinnipiac, and the lure of playing closer to home was hard to resist.
“Over the past four years, it was kind of hard for my parents to come see me,” Falzon noted. “They’d probably see me two, three times a year. Now, they can come to as many as they can. It’s definitely cool to be closer to home, back where I started playing basketball at the beginning.”
Quinnipiac assistant Shaun Morris had recruited Falzon when Falzon was a sophomore in high school and Morris was an assistant at Boston University.
Said Dunleavy, in a statement: “The Quinnipiac basketball family is thrilled to announce the addition of Aaron Falzon as a graduate student-athlete, Aaron will immediately impact our program and the QU community with his talent, character, and team-first approach. We look forward to Aaron joining us this summer and helping us develop into a champion.”
Falzon started 29 games as a freshman, when he averaged 8.4 points and 3.4 rebounds. His sophomore season was limited to three games because of a knee injury and he battled injuries over the next two seasons. He played in 17 games as a senior and his highlight was a 21-point game against Indiana in January.
Falzon had missed the first 10 or so games of the season with an ankle injury and found a hard time getting back into the Wildcats’ rotation. He had played in only a few games when, with about nine minutes left in the first half against Indiana, Northwestern coach Chris Collins threw him in the game. Falzon’s 21 points still stand as his career-best.
Overall, he averaged 6.1 points and had 118 3-pointers at Northwestern.
Northwestern went to the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history when he was a sophomore, and even though Falzon was sitting out with an injury, it was a career highlight.
“That was a once-in-alifetime experience,” he said.
Now, he has a chance to make it, well, twice in a lifetime, with a Quinnipiac team that could be poised to make a run to the top of the MAAC conference. Falzon is the fourth addition to the Quinnipiac program, joining Brendan McGuire (St. Thomas More), Seth Pinkney (Archbishop Wood Catholic/ Montverde Academy), and Jamil Riggins (Imhotep Institute Charter High School in Philadelphia).
“With the roster we have right now, all the young guys that have played the last couple of years and grown in experience, it seems like a team that’s starting to learn to win,” Falzon noted. “The way coach Dunleavy has the program going, it fits to the way I play. I’m really excited to get going.”