Photos by Michael Lipscomb
By Logan Moyer, Sports Editor
Sometimes the shots stop falling. That was the case for the men’s basketball team on Saturday.
In the championship game of the Mike Scheib Memorial Tournament, the River Hawks (2-1) missed eight of their final 10 shots in a 72-63 loss to York (4-0) at O.W. Houts Gymnasium.
The River Hawks had a lead as large as 6 points with 11:18 to play in the second half, but the Spartans took advantage of SU’s dry spell en route to the near double-digit victory.
“They’re a good team,” SU coach Frank Marcinek said. “I thought we did a lot of good things. We had a couple stretches, one in the first half, where we let them get away from us a little bit.”
The River Hawks started the game off slow, missing open looks while turning the ball over. York’s 6-foot-4 guard Jayden Rowe dominated during this period while the Spartans maintained a multi-possession lead.
Rowe finished with 21 points, 15 of which came during the first half. The senior made eight shots from the free throw line.
“He’s a really good player,” Marcinek said. “I thought we did a good job on him… he’s going to get his 18 to 20 [points] a game.”
The River Hawks were a completely different team early in the second half. Those open looks started to fall as SU went on a 10-4 run over a three-minute span.
Jackson Van Wagener led the River Hawks with 13 points while Brandon Lavitt and Billy Anderson both added 11. Audric Washington (9 points) and Mario Castro Sanchez (8 points) also made an impact.
“In the second half, I thought we needed to continue to drive the ball and get the ball inside, because we were in the bonus,” Marcinek said. “We needed to use the free throw line to our advantage in the second half… I thought we settled a little bit.”
The game also saw the return of former River Hawk Cooper Haberern, who jumped to York in the portal as a graduate transfer.
Haberern finished with 9 points and drilled a big 3-pointer down the stretch to help the Spartans maintain their lead.
Marcinek, in his 37th season as the head coach at SU, said that he had never coached against a former player prior to Saturday.
“It’s weird,” he said. “We’ve had other guys leave, but they went to schools that we didn’t play. I can’t wait ‘till we’re done with all these fifth-year guys. It hurts us.”
Susquehanna has very few graduate programs, which has hurt the River Hawks in the era of the transfer portal.
SU played an unusually high 12 players Saturday, something Marcinek attributed to having a young team so early in the season. The River Hawks will need to shore up their rotation ahead of the Landmark Conference opener against Juniata on Wednesday with a 7 p.m. tipoff.
“[York] has a senior point guard; we have a freshman point guard,” Marcinek said. “Big difference in late-game situations. Sometimes, one mistake leads to two, and that happened a little bit tonight.”