Box Score Box Score
Oneonta State's road to the final four turned out to be a dead end Friday as the Red Dragons fell, 91-77, to Franklin & Marshall in the first round of the NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament at Kings Point.
James McNally scored a game-high 26 points for the Diplomats (24-4), who outscored Oneonta, 52-42, in the second half.
#
Brian Hooks (Cohoes/Shaker)# drew a foul on McNally on a three-point attempt with 2 minutes, 38 seconds left and hit all three of the ensuing free throws to pull the Red Dragons (22-7) to 83-72. Eight seconds later, Anthony Brooks scored on a layup to spark an 8-0 run for F&M, resulting in its largest lead of the game as the Diplomats held a 19-point advantage with 1:25 to go.
“We tried to press a little bit being down 11 at the time,” O-State coach Vince Medici said. “They were just running the clock down every possession so we tried to press, but they got a couple of easy buckets off the press.”
Brooks finished with 19 points for the Centennial Conference champion Diplomats, who received 15 from Mike Baker and 12 from Justin Driver. McNally also grabbed a team-best nine rebounds for F&M, which shot 56.5 percent from the floor (35-for-62) and 76 percent from the free throw line (19-for-25).
“It was hard to defend such great accuracy,” Medici said. “I'm just surprised we gave up that many points. They do good post stuff where you can't really get in front of them. They would shoot over us and they made everything they put up.”
#
Brian Beckford's (Brooklyn/Christ the King)# 19 points paced O-State, which received 18 from Hooks and 16 from #
Troy Talbot (Brooklyn/The School for Legal Studies)#. #
Kevin Walsh (Middletown/Minisink Valley)# contributed 11 rebounds and nine points for the Red Dragons, who trailed, 39-35, at halftime. Hooks sank 5 of 10 three-point attempts for Oneonta, which finished 8-for-16 from behind the arc.
Oneonta shot 27-for-53 from the floor (50.9 percent) and hit 15 of 23 foul shots (62.5 percent) in its first NCAA game since 1977. That year, O-State fell, 79-66, to Wittenberg in the NCAA D-III championship game to cap a 21-6 season.
O-State set a single-season program record for victories with a 66-55 defeat of Cortland in a SUNY Athletic Conference Tournament semifinal Feb. 26. Despite falling, 67-60, to Plattsburgh in the SUNYAC Tournament title game the next day, the Red Dragons earned an at-large berth for the 61-team NCAA D-III Tournament.
“We thought we had good chemistry and we had high expectations, so it's not a total surprise we did so well this year,” Medici said. “You're always shooting for the stars anyway.”
The Diplomats advanced to a second-round NCAA game at 7 p.m. Saturday back at Kings Point.
