BALTIMORE – For the third time in the last four championship years, the UMBC men's basketball program will compete for an America East title.
The second-seeded Retrievers (18-13) scorched the nets at a 62.5 percent clip in the second half and knocked off defending league champion Hartford, 80-60, to advance to Saturday's title game at top-seeded Vermont.
Senior reserve forward Syzmon Wojcik (Wroclaw, Poland) led five Retrievers in double figures with 19 points and added a game-high nine rebounds.
The playoff atmosphere drew 3,249 fans to Chesapeake Arena, the ninth-largest home crowd in program history.
The game was tied at 33-all at the half and UMBC led, 48-47 with 12:31 to play. Senior guard
Keondre Kennedy (Atlanta, Ga.) scored five points in an 8-0 run to extend the lead to 56-47 and the Hawks would get no closer than five points.
UMBC won their first America East championship at Vermont in 2018 and fell to the host Catamounts the following season. There was no championship game contested in 2020 and Hartford defeated UMass Lowell last season.
Junior forward
Nathan Johnson (Adel, Iowa) and senior guard
Darnell Rogers (Baltimore, Md.) scored points apiece, with 11 of Rogers' points coming in the second half. Senior guard
L.J. Owens (Annapolis, Md./The Severn School) added 12 points and Kennedy scored 11 points and dished out a team-high five assists.
Jared Kimbrough led Hartford with 16 points.
HOW IT HAPPENED
· Both teams struggled out of the gate, combining to hit 5-of-16 as Hartford lead, 7-6, into the first media break at 15:31.
· An Owens trey and Wojcik fast-break slam erased a 14-10 deficit and gave the Retrievers a 17-14 lead at the 11:24 mark.
· UMBC extended the run to 12-4 and the lead to 22-16 on a
Keondre Kennedy trey at the 8:35 mark, but the Hawks countered with 6 straight to tie the game at 22.
· Wojcik (5/6 fg,11 pts.) and Owens (9 pts.) took over the first-half offense, but six UMBC turnovers kept the game tight into the final stages of first half.
· A Kennedy short bank shot with four seconds remaining tied the score at 33-all at the half.
·
Darnell Rogers came out hot to start the second half, hitting a trey, an acrobatic drive and feeding
Yaw Obeng-Mensah (Toronto, Ont.) on three occasions. But Obeng-Mensah missed 3-of-6 free throw attempts and · UMBC could only carve out a 41-39 lead at the 15:53 mark of the second half.
· A Kennedy trey capped a mini-UMBC 10-3 run and gave the Retrievers a 56-47 lead at the 10:30 mark of the second half.
· UMBC extended the lead to 62-52 on a
Jacob Boonyasith (Grand Rapid, Mich.) trey and a Rogers' driving layup with 8:07 remaining in the second half.
· A Wojcik trey and a Johnson wide-open layup gave the Retrievers a 71-56 advantage with 4:36 remaining.
The Retrievers converted 55.8 percent (29-of-52) in the game and knocked down 11-of-21 treys (52.4 percent). Wojcik, who scored 17 points in the quarter-final win over UMass Lowell, hit 7-of-9 shots from the floor and blocked two shots.
NOTES
-UMBC improved to 5-0 versus Hartford in the America East Tournament, including three semi-final wins.
-The 18 wins by UMBC is tied for their sixth-most in 36 years at the NCAA Division I level. Four of those 18-plus win seasons have occurred in the past four years.
