Mount St. Mary’s Dakota Leffew’s turn-around jumper in the lane with 1:35 left in overtime proved to be the difference, as the No. 8 seeded Mountaineers posted a 67-66 overtime win over Canisius Tuesday night in the opening round of the 2023 Hercules Tires MAAC Men’s Basketball Championship at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J.
The win allowed the Mountaineers (13-19) to advance to the MAAC Tournament quarterfinal round where they will face top-seeded Iona Wednesday night at 7 p.m. The loss ends Canisius’ season at 10-20.
Canisius graduate student Jordan Henderson led all scorers with his game-high 20 points on the night, while redshirt-freshman Tahj Staveskie added 14 points and three assists. Sophomore Xzavier Long posted his second double-double of the season with 12 points and 12 rebounds to go with four assists and senior Jacco Fritz added eight points, six rebounds, a career-high nine assists and a steal, while also drawing five offensive charges. For the game, Canisius shot 33.8 percent from the field, 26.1 percent from 3-point land and 92.3 percent from the free-throw line, while turning 10 offensive rebounds into 18 second-chance points.
Leffew led Mount St. Mary’s with his team-high 15 points. Jalen Benjamin was good for 13 points and five assists, while George Tinsley added 10 points and 11 boards. Malik Jefferson grabbed a game-high 14 rebounds in the win for the Mount, which ended the night out-rebounding Canisius by a 46-34 clip. Mount St. Mary’s shot 46.7 percent from the floor in the win, highlighted by a 57.7 percent effort in the game’s second half. The Mountaineers made eight 3-pointers, but shot just 3-of-12 from the free-throw line on the night while turning the ball over 17 times, against the Griffs’ seven giveaways.
A bucket by Jefferson with 3:19 left in regulation time put the Mountaineers up 59-52, but the Griffs didn’t back down, and raced back to force overtime thanks to a 9-2 run over the final 3:05 of the second half. In that run, Henderson scored seven of the Griffs’ nine points, highlighted by a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 20.4 seconds showing on the clock that evened the score at 61-61. The Griffs got a defensive stop with 2.4 seconds left, but were unable to score as the horn sounded, sending the contest to overtime.
In the overtime period, the Blue and Gold held a 66-63 lead with 2:37 left to play before the Mountaineers scored on back-to-back possessions to help earn the victory. In the closing seconds of overtime, Mount St. Mary’s missed the front-end of a 1-and-1 opportunity at the free-throw line with 4.4 seconds showing on the clock, but Canisius’ last-second heave from just across the mid-court stripe banged off the rim, ending the team’s season.
GAME NOTES
• Tuesday was the fourth all-time meeting between Canisius and Mount St. Mary’s, with three of those games coming this season. The Mountaineers won those three games by a combined six points.
• The overtime game was the Griffs’ fifth extra-session game in the MAAC Men’s Basketball Championship. Canisius is 3-2 in those five contests.
• Thirteen of the Griffs’ 30 games during the 2022-23 campaign were decided by five points or fewer.
• Canisius played five overtime games during the 2022-23 season, the most for the program since 2004-05, when the Griffs played six overtime contests.
• Henderson ends his Canisius career with 1,203 career points, which ranks 24th in school history.
• Henderson’s three 3-pointers in the game gives him 194 for his career, fourth-most all-time in the school’s record book.
• Staveskie, who scored 10-or more points in 20 games this season, closed out his redshirt-freshman campaign averaging 12.4 points per game, which stands as the fourth-best scoring average for a Canisius freshman, since 1973.
• Fritz’s nine assists in the game are the most for a Canisius player since former Griff Javone “Bam” Moore had 12 assists against Niagara in the 1997 MAAC Tournament.
• Long matched a career-high with his 12 rebounds. He also had 12 rebounds in an overtime loss to Cleveland State back on Nov. 16.
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