Durante, Knights off to hot start

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The CCRI Knights men’s basketball team hosted the Quinsigamond Community College Wyverns on Saturday afternoon. A balanced attack pushed the Knights forward to a 20-point victory, 82-62. The win improves their season record to 6-2 record overall and 5-0 in Region XXI play.

The last game before Thanksgiving break offered CCRI an opportunity to head into the holiday with a perfect 5-0 regional record. Quinsigamond had a difficult start to the season, going 1-3 and hoped to turn their season around against CCRI.

The Knights started well, taking a 13-5 lead in three and a half minutes. CCRI used a full court press early to force Quinsigamond into 13 total turnovers and helped provide even more offense for CCRI. The lead was expanded to 18 points 10 minutes into the half, 29-11. Heavy rotation for the Knights kept fresh legs to run the full court press and gave options on offense. At halftime, CCRI led Quinsigamond 51-29.

The second half was a matter of seeing out the game and doing more of the same that had worked in the first half. Continuing the high pressure and rotation of players paved the way to a comfortable 82-62 win for CCRI.

The offense was led by sophomore Dylan Durante (Johnston) with 15 points as he shot 4-4 from beyond the arc and added two steals and one assist. Freshman Mikey Gamble (Hartford, CT) registered 14 points, including four 3-pointers, five assists and one rebound. Freshman Mitchel Noresca (East Providence, RI) ripped down a team leading 11 rebounds while adding nine points and one assist. Freshman Tyreek Davis (Torrington, CT) did well on both sides of the ball as he scored eight points and provided four rebounds, three steals, two assists and one block.

Head Coach Rick Harris commented, "Very nice week for our young guys. We made steady progress all week and were fortunate to win our third game of the week today. The catalyst for our play seemed to be our full court pressure defense which besides disrupting our opponent gave us the extra shots we needed to jumpstart our offense. Today, I was most pleased with our 24 assists, but 13 turnovers are a little high but we seem to be improving in that area. We are happy with our 5-0 league record but the team knows we must work hard daily and continue to get better in order to be prepared for the many challenging games on our schedule."

The CCRI Knights men’s basketball will next be in action on Tuesday, December 3rd at 7:00 p.m. as they travel to Haverhill, Massachusetts to face off with the Northern Essex Community College Knights. Lady Knights fall to Sullivan

The CCRI Lady Knights basketball team hosted the Generals of Sullivan County Community College from Loch Sheldrake, NY to the Cullen Fieldhouse for a basketball game on Saturday afternoon. The Lady Knights lost to the Generals 84-33. With the loss CCRI falls to 2-6 on the season.

This game was a rematch of the Region XV/XXI Championship game last year which saw Sullivan defeat CCRI 77-70 in overtime. However this contest would not be nearly as close. The Lady Knights are in rebuilding mode while the generals are No. 1 in the NJCAA (DII) in steals with 21.7 per game and No. 4 in scoring with 92.5 points per game. Sullivan generated 30 steals in this contest and scored 84 points which was true to form for the Generals. The Lady Knights had a dreadful time on offense as even when they did not turn it over CCRI had a 12.7% field goal percentage and 56.3 percent from the free throw line which is not a recipe for success.

From the opening tip the Sullivan defensive onslaught was in full effect with Kadiyah Britt, the NJCAA steals leader (5.3/gm) had a field day swiping 11 steals on the day while her twin sister Kanayah Britt swiped three. CCRI kept the game relatively close in the first quarter but still trailed 26-13 with five points apiece from Reilly Hodge (Wakefield) and Nicole Chamberlain (West Warwick). After the first quarter the Sullivan defense got even better as they held CCRI to single-digit scoring for teach of the final three quarters to cruise away to the 84-33 victory.     

Leading the way for the Lady Knights was freshman Reilly Hodge who charted her first career Double-double with 10 points and 12 rebounds. Sophomore Nicole Chamberlain chipped in with 11 points including a 3-pointer and seven rebounds. Freshman Kelsey Kozlin (West Warwick) added six points with nine rebounds and two steals.

The next game for the Lady Knights will not be much easier when they travel to Brockton, MA  to face the No. 3 ranked (NJCAA DIII poll ) Warriors of Massasoit Community College in a Region XXI inter league game.      

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