The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Connecticut products Clark, Flowers enjoy historic night
Raiquan Clark began his basketball career at Long Island University as a walk-on.
He will end it as the program’s all-time leading scorer.
Clark, a New Haven native, scored on a layup 16 seconds into overtime on Saturday night to surpass Jamal Olasewere on the school’s all-time scoring list. The redshirt senior now has 1,875 career points ... and counting.
“I feel great,” Clark said by phone on Sunday afternoon. “I didn’t expect that I was gonna get that, so I feel it’s a great accomplishment.”
“It’s been a great journey.”
Indeed, the former Hillhouse star arrived at LIU five years ago without a scholarship. He made a vow to his mother, Shontay Watts, that he would eventually earn one. The summer after his freshman season, during which he played just two minutes in one game, he earned that scholarship through hard work and perseverance.
After a solid sophomore season (6.2 points per game), Clark had a breakout junior campaign, averaging 17.5 points and 7.0 rebounds per contest. Last year, he averaged 18.9 ppg and was a first-team all Northeast Conference selection.
Clark, who earned a fifth year since he barely played — as a walk-on — his first season, is currently leading the Sharks
in scoring at 20.3 per game.
But Clark wasn’t the only Connecticut product to have a huge night in Saturday’s overtime win over Merrimack. Waterbury’s Ty Flowers scored 25 points and grabbed a whopping 27 rebounds, breaking a single-game school and NEC record that had stood since 1983. It was also the most rebounds collected in a single game by any Division 1 player this season.
Ironically, the prior record of 26 was set by Carey Scurry on Feb. 8, 1983 — exactly 37 years earlier.
“Raiquan told me I’ve got to step up a little bit more, this is mine and his team,” said Flowers, a who starred at Sacred Heart Academy. “I’ve got to step up, be a leader with him. So, I had to do something, I couldn’t just keep being on the low end of things.”
“That boy was a dog (on Saturday),” Clark chirped in. “I loved it.”
As the rebounds were piling up for Flowers on Saturday night, LIU director of basketball operations Matt Vogel kept imploring to him, “Get another rebound!”
At one point, Flowers, who averages 10.2 boards per game but had never grabbed 27 in a game at any level, asked Vogel how many he had.
“Twenty-six,” said Vogel.
“What?,” Flowers replied.
“I was in shock,” the redshirt junior recalled.
LIU is currently 11-13 overall and in the middle of the pack of the NEC, at 6-5. The Sharks reached the NCAA tournament in 2018, and Clark wants to get back one more time. There’s more work to be done, as well — Clark could become just the seventh player in NEC history to score 2,000 career points.
He isn’t ready to look back on his collegiate career just yet, but he takes pride in his accomplishments.
“A lot of hard work, trust in my coaches, my teammates — them being there for me — my mother, my two sisters, my father, my girlfriend,” he said. “Just being motivated and dedicated to wanting to be better, wanting to win and being remembered as one of the greats at LIU and bring back another championship.”
Flowers, a redshirt junior, played at UMass as a freshman but transferred the next season to LIU, where he joined his former UMass coach, Derek Kellogg (who notched his 200th careeer victory on Saturday, as well).
The duo were teammates on the Connecticut Select AAU team for a few years, starting when Flowers was in eighth grade and Clark was a freshman.
On Saturday night, the Connecticut products had milestone nights in New York City.
“It’s good for us to be playing together at the highest level,” said Clark. “We were both able to reach our dreams, play Division 1 basketball and now we’re both excelling and playing well. It’s a great feeling.”
3-ON-3 LIST FEATURES LOCALS
Clark is also one of 320 seniors on the Midseason Watch List for the Dos Equis 3x3 National Championship, which will take place in Atlanta from April 3-5.
The event will feature 128 seniors from all 32 Division 1 conferences vying for $150,000. The tournament champions will earn $1000 and earn an automatic berth into the 2020 USA Basketball 3x3 Open National Championships in May.
UConn’s Christian Vital is also on the midseason list, which includes 10 players from all 32 conferences.
The list of Big East players has a particularly Connecticut flavor — Seton Hall’s Quincy McKnight (Bridgeport), St. John’s Mustapha Heron (Waterbury) and Xavier’s Tyrique Jones (Xavier).
Iona’s E.J. Crawford, a Hartford native, is one of the 10 players listed from the MAAC.
The event is free and open to the public, and the first three days will be broadcast live on Twitter, with the semfinals, thirdplace and championship games broadcast on ESPN2.
THIS WEEK’S TOP 25 BALLOT
1. Gonzaga
2. Baylor
3. San Diego State 4. Kansas
5. Louisville 6. Florida State 7. Dayton
8. Duke
9. Auburn
10. Seton Hall
11. Maryland
12. Kentucky
13. Penn State
14. LSU
15. Creighton
16. Marquette
17. Colorado
18. West Virginia 19. Oregon
20. Rhode Island 21. Villanova
22. Houston
23. Illinois
24. Butler
25. Stephen F. Austin