By: Mike Whaley
The Great Bay Community College men’s basketball team has some momentum going into the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (USCAA) Division II Tournament, which will be played in Buffalo, New York, March 11-15. The Herons (22-5) earned the No. 4 seed in the 10-team field when the pairings were announced Monday. They will play No. 5 Penn State Schuylkill on Wednesday, March 12, 10:30 p.m., at either Villa Maria College or Erie Community College. If the Herons win they will play in the final four on Friday, March 14. If they lose, they will play a consolation game on March 13.
The rest of the tournament field includes No. 1 Penn State Mont Alto, No. 2 UC-Clermont, No. 3 Miami-Hamilton, No. 6. Penn State York, No. 7 Penn State Dubois, No. 8 Penn State Wilkes Barre (the two-time defending national champion), No. 9 VTSU-Randolph, and No. 10 Bucks County CC.
Great Bay earned the automatic bid to the nationals by winning its first-ever Yankee Small College Conference (YSCC) tournament championship, winning two games this past weekend at Southern Maine Community College. The Herons went 3-0 overall with wins over Paul Smith’s College, 103-95; Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, 79-67, and Randolph, 71-55, in the final.
The Herons have been led by 6-foot-5 senior forward Theo Wolfe, a three-year performer who has 1,475 career points. A YSCC First-Team All-Conference pick, Wolfe led the conference in both scoring (24.9 ppg) and rebounding (12.2 rpg), and was actually the national scoring champion. He elevated his game during the playoffs, averaging 26.7 points and 15.7 rebounds in the three contests to earn Tournament MVP honors. Mpore Semuhoza, a 6-4 junior forward, was second in both scoring (15.6) and rebounding (8.6) on the way to earning Second Team All-Conference honors. Also chipping in were a couple of Granite State guys: Londonderry junior Ethan May (9.3 ppg) and Belmont senior Keith Landry (7.7 ppg). Landry was named the Offensive Player of the Tournament.
GBCC has some NH flavor with coach Alex Burt (Dover), Landry, May, Sean Chanakira (Danville), Ethan Arnold (Wakefield), Jordan Berko (Farmington), Dylan Jabre (Dover), Joe Gutwein (Peterborough), Cam O’Brien (Dover), Ryan Morse (Salem,) and Thomas Delgado (Exeter).
Randolph (20-12) will play a first-round game on March 11 against Penn State Wilkes Barre. On the women’s side, conference champion Central Maine CC and runner-up UMaine-Augusta punched tickets to the national tourney, also in Buffalo.
Check out the full photo gallery from Great Bay’s title game victory by Michael Griffin…
