The College of Staten Island women’s and men’s basketball squads are returning to the confines of the Sports & Recreation Center tonight, hosting the quarterfinal round of the ECAC Metro NY/NJ Postseason Tournament. The No. 2 seeded women’s team will be facing off against No. 7 Mount Saint Vincent at 6pm, while the CSI men, the top seeds in the tourney, will be entertaining visiting New Jersey City University at 8pm. Tickets to the games are FREE but if you can’t make the game there are a few ways to tune in. WSIA, 88.9FM, will be covering the events live and on their web at www.wsia.fm. CSI SportsNet will also have the call beginning with the CSI Pregame Show at 5:45pm. Mike Baybusky and Chris Soriano have the call courtside and you can tune in at www.csidolphins.com/live.
The CSI basketball teams are no stranger to the ECAC postseason and the ECAC Championship has proven to be a formidable obstacle in the past. For the women, this is their 10th appearance in the ECAC postseason, and the team boasts a 9-8 overall record. The Dolphins won a single ECAC Championship in 2008-09 after having lost in the Final on three previous occasions. Since that Championship, the Dolphins made the ECAC postseason once, and that was last year under Head Coach Tim Shanahan. The team fell to Hartwick College in the Quarterfinal round, 71-56, at the Sports & Recreation Center.
The Dolphins roll into the tournament at 20-7, but are 4-4 in their last eight games, having recently dropped their CUNYAC Postseason Semifinal game to Hunter College, which is also in the tournament as the field’s No. 5 seed. Their opponents tonight are the Mt. St. Vincent Dolphins, who post an impressive 18-9 record. The teams did not play during the regular season, but shared five common opponents. CSI was 8-0 in those games, MSV was 5-1. The two teams have met 16 times in their history with CSI taking 11 of the games. However, the visiting Dolphins hold the most recent advantage in the series, having won the last two meetings, and CSI is only 4-3 all-time at home over MSV.
On the men’s side, they too have been ECAC stalwarts in the past. Tonight marks CSI’s 17th trip to the ECAC postseason and the team boasts only a single championship, in 1986. The Dolphins are 11-15 all-time in ECAC play and have not gotten past the quarterfinal round since 2003-04, when they beat Manhattanville College. CSI is 5-7 all-time in the quarterfinal round, but are on a three-game losing skid in this round since 2004-05.
The Dolphins enter tonight with a record of 25-3, having received a snub from the NCAA’s selection committee for their 62-team tournament which begins the weekend. The Dolphins had their 24-game win streak snapped in the CUNYAC Final. They host NJCU, the No. 8 seed and owners of a 14-12 record. The Gothic Knights are familiar to the Sports & Recreation Center, having played in this year’s installment in the CSI Tournament of Heroes on December 28-29. The two teams, however, did not face one-another.
NJCU boasts a 13-5 overall record over CSI all-time, and the two teams have been meeting since 1979. The Dolphins are 4-5 all-time at home against NJCU, but the Gothic Knights have won three out of the last four in the series, including the last times the two teams met during the 2009-10 season, 79-69. The teams shared six common opponents this year. CSI boasts an 8-0 record in those games, while the Knights fared at 6-4.
Whoever advances in quarterfinal play will play again on Saturday for the semifinals which will lead to Sunday’s championship games.
