Moe Badger sings "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Sunday's Daemen men's basketball game.
All the local luminaries were out to watch the Daemen men's basketball team. Longtime Buffalo Bills play-by-play announcer John Murphy was sitting courtside at Lumsden Gymnasium. University at Buffalo men's basketball coach George Halcovage III made his way into the stands. Moe Badger, one of the Buffalo Police Department's "Singing Cops" and a contestant on CBS' "The Amazing Race," sang the national anthem.
The Wildcats didn't disappoint the notables, or any of the capacity crowd in attendance for the East Coast Conference championship game Sunday at Lumsden Gymnasium. Daemen took advantage of a shooting drought by St. Thomas Aquinas inside the 10-minute mark of the second half, then off the Spartans in the final minutes for a 88-80 win. Daemen won its first East Coast Conference championship and an automatic bid in the NCAA Tournament.
Ben Bill led Daemen with 23 points and Justin Hemphill added 21 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists for the Wildcats (27-0), who earned their fifth NCAA Division II men's tournament berth since 2019.
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Cecilia Lapertosa led the Wildcats (21-7) with 16 points and 10 rebounds, and helped Daemen earn an automatic berth in the Division II NCAA Division II women's tournament.
The Wildcats head into the NCAA Tournament as the only undefeated Division II program in the country, and they'll find out if they're a No. 1 seed - most likely the case - at 10 p.m. Sunday, then find out their first-round opponent an hour later, when the NCAA releases its full Division II tournament bracket.
St. Thomas Aquinas (23-9) won the boards in the first half, but the Wildcats maintained at least a five-point advantage through much of the half, as Bill scored 15 points on 6 of 11 shooting - he opened the game 5 for 5 from the floor - to help the Wildcats take a 40-35 lead at halftime.
Derrick James' free throws 31 seconds into the second half cut Daemen's lead to 40-37, but on the ensuing possession, Andrew Mason's 3-pointer kicked off a 7-0 run in the next 40 seconds to open Daemen's lead to 40-37. The Spartans again cut it to five, less than two minutes later, at 47-42, then to 47-44 after Michael Parrotta's driving layup about 3 ½ minutes in.
Then, with Daemen ahead 51-46, the Wildcats went on a 10-4 run, punctuated by Bill's dunk just before the under-12 media timeout, to open their lead to 61-50. The Wildcats maintained a lead of at least nine points in the next few minutes, even after St. Thomas Aquinas entered the bonus with 9:37 left, and opened the lead to as many as 14, at 71-57 after Justin Glover's layup off a steal with 7:54 left, combined with the Spartans missing six of their seven shots in a span of less than two minutes.
The Spartans cut Daemen's lead to 78-69 with 3:31 left on Luis Risquez's 3-pointer with 3:31 left, and St. Thomas Aquinas immediately called a timeout after the play. But Risquez fouled out less than 30 seconds later, and Bill hit a free throw, then Hemphill's shot off Matt Becker's rebound on the second free throw made it 81-69.
The Spartans, though, went on an 11-2 run to cut the lead to 83-80 with 41.1 seconds left, before Hemphill's free throw made it 84-80.
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College/high school sports enterprise reporter
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