Picture Above:
Michael Carey defends St. Bonaventure's Dion Wright
(photo by Steve Harrison)

Information on Wagner-Creighton Second-Round NIT Game

Box Score (PDF) |  Box Score (HTML) |  Video Highlights (Courtesy of ESPN)
Photo Gallery (by Steve Harrison)

Wagner shocks No.1-seed St. Bonaventure 79-75 in NIT opener (Cormac Gordon, silive.com)
Bonaventure Falls at home to Wagner in NIT Opener (Democrat & Chronicle)
Bonaventure men fall in the first round of NIT (Mark Belcher, WIVB4.com)

Postseason NIT Website | NIT Bracket (PDF) | NIT Official Release | Official NIT Program

Olean, NY – The Wagner men's basketball team built a 14-point halftime lead and withstood a late St. Bonaventure rally in earning a 79-75 victory over the Bonnies of the Atlantic 10 Conference in the first round of the 2016 National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in front of a loud, raucous crowd at the Reilly Center.
 
In recording the first postseason victory in school history, which came over the No. 1-seeded Bonnies, the eighth-seeded Seahawks improve to 23-10 on the season. After staying in Buffalo, NY on Wednesday night, the Seahawks will take a charter flight on Thursday afternoon to Omaha, NE to meet the Creighton University Bluejays of the Big East Conference.
 
The game vs. the fourth-seeded Bluejays will take place on Saturday, March 19 at Noon (Eastern Standard Time) in a contest that will be televised nationally on ESPN. Creighton advanced to the second round with a 72-54 home win over No. 5 seed Alabama tonight.
 
Sophomore guard Romone Saunders (Temple Hills, MD / Potomac [Mt. Zion Prep]) came off the bench to score 21 points to lead four players in double figures.

Redshirt senior guard Dwaun Anderson (Suttons Bay, MI/Suttons Bay) supplied 14 points, while redshirt junior forward Mike Aaman (Hazlet, NJ/Raritan [University of Rhode Island]) and junior guard Michael Carey (Nassau, Bahamas / Lamar Consolidated [San Jacinto College]) had 13 for the Northeast Conference (NEC) regular season champions.

"No one gave us a chance," said Wagner fourth-year head coach Bashir Mason. "We came in with the approach that we had nothing to lose. Who cares if we win or not? Just go out and play hard and have fun."

Jaylen Adams scored a game-high 24 points and Marcus Posley added 17 for the Bonnies who finish the season with a mark of 22-8.

"I thought we didn't come out well at all. Give Wagner credit," said St. Bonaventure head coach Mark Schmidt. "I thought they played really well; they came at us and put us on our heels with the 1-1-3 zone. They hurt us in the first half and we didn't have any energy; they knocked us back. In the second half I thought we played hard, and we got ourselves back into the game, but every time we got close, Wagner made a play to stretch the lead out a bit."

St. Bonaventure, which was highest-ranked RPI team (No. 30) in the 32-team NIT field, led 5-4 early before a 22-5 surge by the Seahawks blew the game open. Saunders' three-pointer with 4:05 to play in the first half gave Wagner its biggest lead of the period at 36-19. . Saunders paced the Seahawks with 13 first-half points on 5-of-7 shooting while Carey and Aaman added nine and eight points, respectively, in helping the Seahawks build a 40-26 halftime lead.
 
Wagner shot a scorching 54.8 percent (17-of-31) in the first half while limiting the Bonnies to 30 percent (9-of-30) from the field, and 13.2 percent (2-of-15) from beyond the arc. The Seahawks enjoyed a 21-15 rebounding edge in the opening stanza which led to a commanding 26-14 advantage in points in the paint.

St. Bonaventure outscored Wagner 49-39 in the final frame and pulled within 71-69 on Denzel Gregg's jumper with 2:12 left.

Saunders hit a huge three-pointer with 1:45 to play off an assist by sophomore guard JoJo Cooper (Wilmington, DE / Concord ) to stretch the lead to 74-69 and the Seahawks showed great poise in sealing the win by sinking 5-of-6 free throws in the final 12 seconds of play after Adams and Posley had hit late three-pointers.

"We kept talking about the fact that we'd been in these kinds of situations during the season, and that all we had to do was stick together and keep playing," said Mason, the 2016 NEC Coach of the Year who guided the Seahawks to the conference's regular season championship. "And that's what we did."

The victory marks the third time in the last four years that an NEC NIT No.8 seed has knocked off a No.1 Robert Morris defeated Kentucky in 2013 and St. John's in 2014. 



Wagner All-Time in the Postseason
NCAA
March 21, 2003: Pittsburgh 87, Wagner 61 (Boston, MA)
 
NIT
March 16, 2016: Wagner 79, St. Bonaventure 75 (Olean, NY)
March 13, 2002: Richmond 67, Wagner 64 (OT) (Richmond, VA)
March 7, 1979: Old Dominion 83, Wagner 81 (Norfolk, VA)

 

Wagner Men's Basketball All-Time 20-Win Seasons
Year	Record	Head Coach
2011-12	25-6	Dan Hurley
2007-08	23-8	Mike Deane
2015-16	23-10	Bashir Mason (Note: Coach Mason has also led Wagner to two 19-win seasons)
2002-03	22-11	Dereck Whittenburg
1978-79	21-7	P.J. Carlesimo
1967-68	21-8	Chester Sellitto
1955-56	20-3	Herb Sutter

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