The St. John Fisher College men's basketball team rolled to an 86-60 victory at Elmira College on Saturday.
With the win, Fisher improves to 18-5 overall and 9-3 in the Empire 8, earning one of four spots for the Empire 8 Conference Championship. It is the 16th straight year Fisher has earned a post-season bid. If the Cardinals can win their last two games they will host the Conference Championship the following weekend. Fisher has hosted and won the four-team tournament each year since the Championship was created in 2004.
On Saturday, The Cardinals, who came through with a quadruple-overtime win less than 20 hours earlier, led by just four points at intermission, but pulled away in the second half.
Fisher opened the second half with an impressive 18-0 run over the opening 4:36, in which the Cardinals went 5-for-5 from behind the 3-point line. Over the first 10 minutes of the second half, the Cardinals outscored the Soaring Eagles 32-4, shooting 12-of-15 (80.0%) from the floor. Fisher finished the game with 13 3-pointers and made eight of nine shots from beyond the arc to start the second half.
Freshman
Chris Baltz (Vestal/Vestal) scored a game-high 17 points, and shot 4-of-7 from behind the 3-point line.
Dan Mueller (Waterloo/Waterloo) and
Matt Newman (Campbell-Savona/Campbell) shot a combined 6-for-6 from 3-point range, and scored nine and 11 points, respectively.
Junior
Justin Beigel (Colerain/Cincinnati, OH) finished with 15 points, three assists, and three steals, while
Dan McSweeney (Marcellus/Marcellus) tallied eight points and three assists.
Fisher will return to action at 8 p.m. on Friday to take on visiting Utica College in a critical Empire 8 Conference game. The Pioneers, who defeated Fisher in double-overtime earlier this year, can clinch the top seed for the Conference Championship with a win.
