So far, we’ve checked out St. Francis’s Peter Aquilone Court, Long Island U’s Wellness, Recreation and Athletic Center, a doubleheader at the Garden, Fordham’s Rose Hill Gym, and Manhattan College’s Draddy Gymnasium. Tonight, our NYC College Hoops Tour continues in the theoretical, unexplored land of Staten Island: It’s time for some Wagner Seahawks basketball!
Tonight, at 7 p.m., we will watch an epic Northeast Conference matchup. It’s the Wagner Seahawks, 4–23 and 2–12 in the NEC, host the Bryant Bulldogs who are, amazingly, 0–26. That’s right: They’re 0–26.
It’s the next stop in our endless tour. The rest of the schedule:
Wednesday, February 24
Marquette at St. John’s (in Jamaica)
Saturday, February 27
Princeton at Columbia
Aw, it’s almost over. We’ve come so far.
Ordinarily, we simulate every game on our PS3 version of NCAA Basketball 2010, but that proved impossible for this game: Bryant isn’t officially a member of the NEC yet (their introductory period ends in 2012), so they’re not on the game. Woe to us! Ever crafty, though, we looked at our Pomeroy Ratings to find a Bryant equivalent. Even though the Bulldogs are 0–26, they’re actually not the worst team in Division I-A, according to Pomeroy: That honor belongs to Alcorn State, who is 1–25 and ranked 347th, dead last, one spot below Bryant. So we used them in our simulation against Wagner (327 in the Pomeroy Ratings).
And Wagner still lost! The final score was 68–46. The Seahawks shot 30 percent from the field and hit no three points; they were “led” by Doug Elwell, who scored fourteen points and had seven rebounds. We are more hopeful for the Seahawks. The local teams are 2–4 on our visits, but we have faith that Wagner will bring us one spot closer to .500 tonight. Go Seahawks! Go Staten Island!
(If we’re not back to do the site tomorrow, call the police.)