Nov. 18, 2009
Game Notes 
GAME 3 • November 19, 2009
Matchup: Lafayette (1-1) at St. Francis (Pa.) (1-1)
Tip-off: 7:00 p.m.
Site: Loretto, Pa.
Arena: DeGol Arena (3,500)
Radio: WSAN-AM Fox 1470
Dick Hammer (Play-By-Play), Phil LaBella (Color Analyst)
Internet: www.goleopards.com
Series: First Meeting
LAST TIME OUT: The Leopards opened their season with a 81-72 win over Wagner on Friday night. Jared Mintz recorded his third career double-double, with 20 points and 10 rebounds. On Sunday, Lafayette traveled to Sacred Heart where the Maroon and White led for the first half but fell, 81-72, to the Pioneers.
MATCH UP: Thursday's match-up between Saint Francis (Pa.) and Lafayette will be the first ever match up. Both teams are coming in with 1-1 marks.
MEET THE CAPTAINS: Senior guards Jeff Kari and Mike Gruner are taking the leadership role for the 2009-10 season. Kari, who served as a co-captain last year, is the team's top returning scorer (10.7 ppg). Gruner started in 19 games last year and accounted for 61 assists.
DOUBLE YOUR PLEASURE: Junior forward Jared Mintz led the team against Wagner with 20 points and 10 rebounds in at 81-72 home victory to start the season. The double-double was Mintz's third of his career.
GOING FOR TWO FIGURES: In the home opener against Wagner, four Leopards contributed double figures for the win. Jared Mintz led the team with 20, while senior Jeff Kari finished with 14 points and sophomores Ryan Willen and Jim Mower added 15 and 12, respectively.
100 AND STILL GOING: The 2009-10 season marks Lafayette College's 100th season of men's basketball.
195...AND COUNTING: Lafayette head coach Fran O'Hanlon needs five wins to reach the 200-win plateau.
ON THE SIDELINE: The all-time winningest coach in Lafayette history and tenured coach in the Patriot League, Fran O'Hanlon (Villanova, '70) is in his 15th season as the Leopards' head coach. A two-time Patriot League Coach of the Year recipient, O'Hanlon has twice led Lafayette's program to the NCAA Tournament and lays claim to three Patriot League regular-season titles.
With a 75-71 double-overtime victory over Lehigh on Feb. 18, 2007, O'Hanlon became the winningest coach in Lafayette history and now holds an all-time record of 195-211 on College Hill.
O'Hanlon's overall record does not necessarily tell an accurate story of the job he has done at Lafayette. The Philadelphia native inherited a 2-25 team when he took over in 1995-96 and won seven, 11, 19, 22 and 24 games over the next five seasons. From 1997-2000, Lafayette was 65-24 overall and 31-5 in the conference with two NCAA Tournament appearances. In 1996, the Patriot League, which was originally founded based on the principle of need-based financial aid only, began allowing athletic scholarships. However, it was not until 2006 that Lafayette chose to do so. By no coincidence, during that span, Lafayette posted a 79-91 mark and was 38-44 in the league.
FRESH FACES: Head coach Fran O'Hanlon added two new faces to the coaching staff this season. Pat Doherty is a familiar face to the Lafayette program, graduating from Lafayette in 2004. Doherty was an assistant coach at Williams College in 2008-09, helping lead Williams to a 17-9 overall record. In 2007-08 Doherty served as an assistant coach at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ).
Matt Blue holds down the final assistant coaching spot. Blue, a 2007 graduate of St. Lawrence comes to Lafayette after spending the 2008-09 season at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pa. He helped lead the Crusaders to an 18-8 overall mark and a 13-3 finish in the Landmark Conference.
NEWCOMERS: Head coach Fran O'Hanlon brought in two new players to the Lafayette roster this season. The first, Levi Giese, comes from Tulsa, Okla. The 6-9 forward has good perimeter skills and will be seeing some time on the court this season as he learns the nuances of the offense. The second, Tony Johnson, hails from Folsom, Calif. The 6-0 guard is likely the only true point guards one the team who has the ability to force his way onto the floor as a rookie and see valuable playing time. Johnson has begun to make an impact on the court for the Leopards. Johnson played 18 minutes in his collegiate debut against Wagner and finished with six points and a team-best three steals and pulled down four boards and saw the court for 21 minutes against Sacred Heart.
D.C. DANDIES: Though players from 11 states and three countries are represented on Lafayette's roster, the Leopards do have a tendency for the D.C. area. Prior to arriving on College Hill, three of Lafayette's guards attended schools within 25 miles of the nation's capital. Michael Gruner shined at Walt Whitman High School, where he led his team to a state championship. Junior Ben Wheeler played at Chantilly where he garnered first team all-district and second team all-region accolades his senior year. Sophomore Nick Petkovich is the most recent addition from the D.C. area, an All-IAC Conference First-Team selection from Bullis Prep.
AROUND THE WORLD: Five international players are featured between the two rosters of tonight's matchup. Lafayette boasts three international players in Jared Mintz (Toronto, Canada), Marek Koltun (Krakow, Poland) and Deirunas Visockas (Lithuania) while St. Francis features Mislav Jukic (Zagreb, Croatia) and Sorena Orandi (Vastra Frolunda, Sweden).
LAFAYETTE VS. THE NEC: Including this week's game, Lafayette will play six opponents from the Northeast Conference in 2009-10. The Leopards have scheduled matchups against Sacred Heart (Nov. 15), Saint Francis (Pa.) (Nov. 19), Fairleigh Dickinson (Dec. 9), Long Island (Dec. 12) and St. Francis (N.Y.) (Dec. 22).
Central Conn. State 2-1 Mt. St. Mary's 3-1 St. Francis (N.Y.) 3-2
Fairleigh Dickinson 1-2 Quinnipiac 0-0 St. Francis (Pa.) 0-0
Long Island 0-0 Robert Morris 0-2 Wagner 5-1
Monmouth 0-0 Sacred Heart 0-1
Scouting Saint Francis: Saint Francis sits at 1-1 coming into Thursday night's match-up. Last year the Red Flash finished 6-23 and 3-15 in the Northeast Conference. The Red Flash lost five of their players including three starters to graduation last year. Saint Francis lost its third leading scorer, Marquis Ford (9.2 ppg), and steals leader Cale Nelson (35).
Don Friday will have five returnees and 10 new faces to teach and guide during the 2009-10 season. Friday enters his second season as head man at Saint Francis with aspirations of helping the Red Flash turn the corner in the win-loss column.
Saint Francis welcomes back its top two scorers in seniors, Devin Sweetney and Mislav Jukic plus three other experienced players, as well as the addition of 10 players in Friday's first recruiting class. Jukic averaged 10.4 points per game and 4.8 rebounds per game, while Sweetney averaged 16.3 points per game and lead the team with 7.9 rebounds per game in 2008-09.
NEXT UP: Lafayette will travel to Newark, N.J. to take on NJIT on Saturday for a 4 p.m. tip-off. The Leopards will then host Hartford in the season's second double-header, on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.
BASKETBALL IQ: Lafayette placed a program-best five student-athletes on the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll during the 2008-09 season. The distinction recognizes those individuals who have earned a varsity letter and maintained a 3.2 GPA during the spring semester. Senior Michael Gruner and sophomores Rob Delaney and Andy Moore each earned a nod.
GRUNER GETS IT DONE: If senior Michael Gruner can pick up where he left off last season, the Leoaprds will be in pretty good shape. Gruner was a mainstay in the starting lineup last season after he worked his way into the rotation with his defense. He proved to be Lafayette's steadiest ballhandler, dishing out 61 assists to 44 turnovers for a 1.4 assist/turnover ratio and 196 points (8.2 ppg) his junior year. Gruner is also a Marquis Scholar, recipient of the most prestigious academic scholarship awarded to Lafayette students. Coming out of high school in Bethesda, Md., Gruner led his Walt Whitman squad to the Maryland 4A state title while earning Gazette Co-Player of the Year honors along with the NBA's 2007-08 Rookie of the Year Kevin Durant of Montrose Christian.
THE PRESEASON POLL: Lafayette was chosen to finish eighth in the Patriot League Preseason Poll. The poll is voted on by the conference head coaches and sports information directors. Holy Cross was picked to finish first with 13 first place votes, followed by Lehigh, Bucknell, Army, Colgate, American and Navy.
IN THE RANKS: Seven of Lafayette's non-conference opponents were picked to finish within the top five of their respective leagues in the preseason polls. At No. 2, Long Island is the highest ranked non-conference opponent the Leopards will face. Lafayette will tip off against six opponents from the Northeast Conference -- the most of any one conference on the Leopards' schedule.
LAFAYETTE ON TELEVISION: The Leopards will have 13 of their regular-season games televised during the 2009-10 season. The Leopards will also lead the Patriot League with seven nationally-televised games, as MASN (available through both DIRECTV and DISH Network) will air Lafayette's entire slate of home league contests on a tape-delay basis. Emmy-nominated local sports broadcaster Gary Laubach will handle all of Lafayette's play-by-play duties for the 13th straight season. Former Lafayette men's basketball coach John Leone will provide color analysis for the 11th season.
FRESHMAN PHENOM: Sophomore forward Ryan Willen was named to the All-Patriot League Rookie team in 2008-09. He was the first freshman since Andrew Brown '09 and the seventh freshman in school history to earn the accolade.
Willen made an immediate impact in his first season as a Leopard. In just the second game of the year, the Cape Girardeau, Mo., native recorded the first of three double-doubles, which ranked as third-most in the league. He was also the first Lafayette freshman since 1995-96 (Stefan Ciosici '00) to record more than one double-double in his rookie year. Willen received his first starting nod in the conference season opener at Holy Cross on Jan. 10 and has not been left out of the lineup since.
He consistently led the Leopards in rebounding in 2008-09 with 4.9 boards per game and was the first freshman since the 1995-96 season to lead the team in rebounding. He nabbed the school's first weekly accolade of the season on Feb. 23, 2009 following one of his best performances of his short career. As part of a career-high 20-point performance on Feb. 18, his last-second free throws stopped Bucknell from overcoming a 16-point second-half deficit and secured Lafayette's seventh win of the season. His production was his eighth-straight game of scoring in double figures.
This season Willen is the Leopards second leading scorer averaging 14.5 points per game and shooting 75 percent from the line. In addition to his work on the court, Willen is currently enrolled in organic chemistry, ethics, introduction to psychology, religions in world cultures and two labs.
ON THE RADIO: The road games of the 2009-10 Lafayette men's basketball season will air on WSAN-AM 1470 "The Fox." Entering his 43nd season as the radio voice of Lafayette athletics, Dick Hammer will continue to call the play-by-play action. Joining Hammer courtside for most contests will be Lafayette Sports Information Director Phil LaBella.
