BUFFALO — Canisius returns home for a brief two-game homestand, starting Saturday afternoon when the Golden Griffins play host to St. Francis Brooklyn. Canisius, which is tied for the nation’s lead with four road wins, is looking for its first victory in the Koessler this season.
The Canisius Golden Griffins return home for the first time in 18 days when the team plays host to St. Francis Brooklyn in the Koessler Athletic Center. The Griffs are coming off an 87-77 win at Boston University on Wednesday. The victory, the team’s fourth road win of the season, allowed Canisius to match its road win total for all of 2015-16.
Canisius starts Saturday’s game ranked third in the MAAC in scoring average at 75.6 points per game. The team ranks second in the league in field goal shooting percentage at 45.5 percent from the floor. Junior Kassius Robertson scored a game-high 19 in the win at Boston University – one of five Griffs to record double-figures in the scoring column. Robertson leads the MAAC and ranks ninth nationally with 3.7 3-point makes per game. He knocked down five treys in the win on Wednesday. Freshman guard Isaiah Reese came off the bench to score a career-high 16 points in the win over Boston University. In his last five games, the Miami, Florida native is averaging 8.0 points and 4.0 boards per game.
This will be the 12th all-time meeting between these two games in a series that started during the 1948-49 season. Canisius leads the series 6-5, but St. Francis Brooklyn has won two straight and three of the last five contests, dating back to the 1982-83 campaign. The Griffs and the Terriers last met in Buffalo on Dec. 10, 2010 – a 76-58 victory for St. Francis Brooklyn. That 18-point win stands as the largest victory in the series for the Terriers.
St. Francis Brooklyn comes into today’s game with an overall record of 2-7. The Terries snapped their four-game slide with a 69-51 win over Mount St. Vincent Dec. 6, in Brooklyn. The Terriers are 0-5 on the road this season, with the team’s most recent road loss coming to Army West Point Dec. 3. Senior Yunus Hopkinson leads the St. Francis Brooklyn offense with his 14.6 points per game scoring average. He has made a team-high 27 3-pointers this season, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of the team’s makes from behind the arc. Freshman Glenn Sanabria ranks second on the team in scoring average with 14.0 points per game, and he joins with Hopkinson as the only two players on the St. Francis Brooklyn roster with more than 20 makes from 3-point land this season.
The Griffs have good reason to be happy to calendar has rolled over to December. Since 2012-13, Canisius is 22-9 in games played in the final month of the calendar year. Some of those wins include victories over cross-town rival Buffalo, ULM, Stony Brook, Temple and MAAC rivals Fairfield, Monmouth and Siena. Prior to the 2012-13 season, Canisius only had 11 wins in the month of December from 2008-09 through the 2011-12 campaigns.
Canisius will close out its brief two-game homestand on Monday when the Blue and Gold plays host to Albany. That game will tipoff at 7 p.m., and be broadcast live on ESPN3.
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