By Nick Kurti
Staff Writer
The No. 24 Lions have lots to prove with such high pre-season hopes, and with a new head coach in Evan Elberg, they did not disappoint.
The tournament kicked off against the City College of New York on Nov. 14, and the Lions were off to a hot start with senior guard Nick Koch making a layup and earning the extra point just twenty seconds in. After back-to-back threes from senior Jonathan Okocha, the College was up 11-5 and showed no signs of slowing down. Okocha personally set a career-best performance on the Beavers, with 28 points on the night. He shot 8-11 in threes and 9-12 in the field.
Koch also had a stellar performance, logging 15 points solely from inside the field, while Daniel Yarus put up the same points tally with 11 less minutes logged on the court. Freshmen Mason Mangione and Lucas Dipasupil both got their first ever court appearances at Packer Hall, with Mangione making a trio of threes and Dipasupil logging two layups and a free throw. After the first 12 minutes of the game, the Lions were up by a minimum of 13 points for the entire game, and ended the half on a senior Matt Solomon dunk 56-34.
The rest of the game saw the Lions refusing to let up, with the College striking by scoring on fast breaks 17-4, turnovers 20-13 and second chances 16-6. While the Lions had kept up a lead of about 20 points, around seven minutes into the second half, the team gained momentum until they were leading by 39. In the final five minutes, the Lions had subbed out the entire starting lineup to soften the blow on CCNY, but by the final buzzer the College had won by a commanding 106-74. The game was not only record-breaking in points, being the highest in one game since 2010, but the 26 assists were also the highest the College had seen since the 2022 season.
“People always talk about planting seeds that you never see grow,” Coach Elberg said after the game, “but I think it's been really special for me to come back and see some of those trees fully blossomed six or seven years later.” Elberg was assistant coach under the former head coach, Matt Goldsmith, until 2019, but has returned to be head coach after Goldsmith left last season.
The next day, the Lions faced the tournament final against No. 13 Wesleyan, a formidable opponent that ended their previous season in the Final Four with a record of 30-2. Solomon got the Lions off to a good start with a three and a dunk, and in the first four minutes the College was up 18-4, the largest lead they would take all night. Solomon had a 21-point performance against the Cardinals, leading the team with eight assists and seven rebounds in his 38 minutes on the court.
While the Lions led by double digits for most of the first half, Wesleyan made some substitutions and began coming back on scoring; the Cardinals bench scored 18 points in the first half alone. At the break, the lead was still in the College’s hands but now at 38-36. Just one minute into the second half, a Hauser Fritz layup would give Wesleyan the lead 40-39. The entire team had doubled their three-pointer accuracy to keep the game competitive until the very end, with a 28-point performance by Koch leading the way.
The Lions had the ball, down by three, with seven seconds left. Koch picked up the dribble and threw it over to Solomon alone on the wing. His buzzer-beater three swished and took the Cardinals’ regulation-winner hopes down, as the Lions would force overtime and win the tournament 92-90.
“Honestly, it's just the trust that my teammates and my coaches had in me,” explained Solomon after the game. “Coach Elberg was just telling us to remember those times when we're struggling, or we're about to pass out because those 6 a.m. lifts or 6 a.m. conditionings are so hard.”
