Manhattan upsets Iona 79-69 to Win MAAC Title

Now that the NCAA BB Men’s regular season has ended we will see, first the individual conference Championship games and then move on to the NCAA Annual March Madness Tournament. So yesterday, the 9th of Mar. 2015 on ESPN, we saw the MAAC MEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP – Final Game, as the Manhattan Jaspers 19-13, 13-7 MAAC- (3rd Metro Atlantic Athletic Conf.) playing the Iona Gaels 26-8, 17-3 MAAC (1st Metro Atlantic Athletic Conf.) with the game played at the Time Union Center in Albany, New York and the game tipped-off at 9PM ET.

This was a game that Iona was expected to win since they had the best record in the MAAC conference coming into to this game. But as the scoring in this game indicates, the Jaspers of Manhattan had other thoughts as in the 1st half of this game they outscored the favorite Gaels of Iona 39-37 thus the Gaels went to half-time with a 2 point deficit. In the second half of the game Iona had every intention of erasing that 2 point deficit and winning the game. But then again the Jaspers were on a roll and again outscored Iona in the 2nd and final half of this game 40-32 as Manhattan won the game and the MAAC Title with the Win.

Top 5 performances in this game for the Jaspers of Manhattan came from forward-Pankey-21 points 10 rebounds 3 assists 2 blocks, forward-Andular-18 points 11 rebounds 4 assists 2 steals, guard-Kates-13 points 3 rebounds 1 assist 1 steal, forward-Richards-11 points, 8 rebounds and guard-Stores-9 points 3 rebounds 5 assists and 1 steal.

The leading 5 performances for the Gaels for Ion came from guard-Laury-24 points 10 rebound 5 assists 1 block, guard-Amayo-11 points 10 rebound 4 assists, guard-English-10 points 3 rebounds 4 assists 1 steal, guard-Casimir-10 points 5 rebounds and guard-Williams-7 points 4 rebounds and 2 assists.

The team statistics in this game show that the Jaspers scored the winning 79 points in the game as the attempted 60 field goals completing 26 for 43% completion, on 3-pointers they made 9 of 22 for 41% completion and on foul shots they made 18 of 28 for a 64% completion rate, and committed 22 fouls in the game.

The Gaels scored a total of 69 points in the game as they attempted 59 field goals completing 23 for 39% completion and on 3-pointers they made 5 of 22 for 23% completion, for foul shots they made 18 of 24 for a 75% completion rate and committed 24 fouls in the game. The Jaspers and the Gaels committed no Technical or Flagrant fouls in this game.

The game leaders for points in this game were Pankey for the Jaspers with 21 and Laury for the Gaels with 24 points. On the non-scoring stats as rebounds the leader for the Jaspers was Andujar with 11 and for Iona it was Laury with 10 rebounds. On assists it was Stores for the Jaspers with 5 and Laury for Iona with 5. For steals Andujar for the Jaspers had 2 and English for Iona had 1 steal. Finally on blocked shots, Pankey for Manhattan had 2 and Laury for Iona had 2 blocks also.

This turned out to be an amazing upset for the Manhattan Jaspers, as twice in this 2014-15 season, they lost to the Gaels of Iona in very close scoring games. With this upset it is the 2nd consecutive MAAC Title for Manhattan. Now for those that Bet on College hoops at SBG Global or other like online sites, coming next for the Jaspers of Manhattan is the NCAA tournament while Iona awaits other tournaments invitations.

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