St. Francis wins basketball’s Battle of Brooklyn for the 2nd time in 12 tries

January 13, 2014 By Rob Abruzzese Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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Jalen Cannon was fired up and ready to go. He was excited to play St. Francis’ archrival LIU Brooklyn and kept watching the clock, waiting for the game could begin.

Before warm-ups were over, one of the LIU Brooklyn players taunting St. Francis’ Ben Mockford. “I think he said that I can’t shoot or something,” Mockford said as he brushed off the significance of the heckle.

Mockford responded to the taunts by 30 points including eight three-pointers to lead the St. Francis Terriers to an impressive 78-64 victory over the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds. It was the first Northeast Conference win for the Terriers and only the second time that they have beaten the Blackbirds in their last 12 attempts.

“I feel like it motivated him a lot,” Cannon said of Mockford. “When people start talking smack to him like that he gets a little rowdy and ready to go.”

“It was a good night for us,” said St. Francis’ head coach Glenn Braica. “We got a chance to beat an arch-rival that is a very good team and to go 1-0 in the league. They’ve had a very good run in the conference over the last couple of years where not many teams have beaten them. It’s not just us, it’s the whole league that hasn’t beaten them.”

Mockford finished with 30 points, Cannon had 19 and 14 rebounds and Brent Jones had eight points with a career-high 12 assists for St. Francis. For LIU Brooklyn, Landon Atterberry had 19, Gerrell Martin had 18, E.J. Reed had 11 and Jason Brickman added six points and 11 assists.

The biggest stat of the night, aside from Mockford’s total threes, was offensive rebounds. St. Francis out-rebounded LIU Brooklyn 52-28, grabbing 26 offensive boards in the process. Cannon corralled seven offensive rebounds in the first half alone, which allowed him to explode for 17 first half points and contribute to the Terriers’ 45-35 halftime lead

“(LIU Brooklyn head coach Jack Perri) walked by me at halftime and said that ‘I’ve never seen a stat like that,’” Braica said referring to the Terriers’ 20 offensive rebounds in the first half. “I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time, but we had 20 offensive rebounds at half. I don’t know if that was a mistake, but that was one of the keys to our game to go to the glass. If you are going to beat this team, you’d better beat them inside. I knew we were doing a good job, but I had no idea that we’d had 20 at the half.”

It’s no secret that rebounding is the Blackbirds’ biggest weakness due to their lack of size. With big-man and 2012 NEC Player of the Year Julian Boyd out with a torn ACL, teams look to exploit LIU in this area. LIU is also without Nura Zanna and Chris Carter, two players that were supposed to help up front. Perri said that it’s been a problem all season long.

“Coach told me before practice the other day that there are points on the board to just keep going to the board,” Cannon said. “They play a zone so it’s going to be easy rebounds on the offensive glass so you have to stay with it.”

While none of the players or coaches would admit it after the game, this marks the changing of the guard in Brooklyn. The Blackbirds have been the dominant team in recent years as they have won three consecutive NEC titles. However, they’ve been weakened with players graduating or doing down with injuries while the Terriers are up-and-coming and are quietly becoming the team to beat in the NEC.

“I don’t know, I don’t make predictions,” Braica said when asked how good his team could be. “I like this group, we’re resilient. They have a certain something about them where they don’t give in. They’re not perfect, but they’re good kids and they work. We just want to take it one day at a time and see how good we can be.”

“This isn’t our ultimate goal to beat LIU,” Braica said. “We want to beat them, but we want to take it a step further and be as good as we can be.”