Sweet Sixteen! UB Men Advance To ECC Championship With 79-69 Win Over Molloy For Sixteenth Straight Victory

Rochester, N.Y.-The University of Bridgeport men's basketball team picked up its sixteenth straight victory on Saturday, as the top-seeded Purple Knights advanced to the 2018 East Coast Conference Men's Basketball Championship Tournament Final for the first time since 2015 with a hard-fought, 79-69, victory over the number five seed, Molloy College Lions at the Voller Athletic Center on the campus of Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, N.Y. UB is now 25-4 overall, and will face the winner of Saturday's second semifinal between St. Thomas Aquinas and Daemen on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. for the ECC title and an automatic bid to the 2018 NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Championship Tournament. Molloy closes out its season with a 9-21 record.

With the game tied 37-37 at the half, Bridgeport raced out to an 11-point lead, 50-39 with 15:33 to play in the half only to see the pesky Lions go on an 11-0 run to tie things at 50-50.

The Purple Knights would then go on a 5-0 run of their own to take a 55-50 lead with 10:15 remaining.

Again, the Lions would not go away as they tied the game at 57-57 with to play.

From there, Bridgeport sophomore Bakary Camara (Harlem, N.Y.) scored six consecutive points to give his team a 63-57 lead which UB would not give up. Camara finished the game as Bridgeport's leader in scoring and rebounding with a double-double of 16 points and a game-best 10 rebounds.

Joining Camara in double-digit scoring for the winners were junior Vakas Iqbal (Staten Island, N.Y.) with 12 points, senior Marc Campbell (Elmont. N.Y.) with 11 points off the UB bench, and seniors Sam Joseph (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and Sharif Cobb (Harlem, N.Y.), each with 10 points.

Molloy's Curtis Jenkins lead all players in the game with 20 points, and he was joined in double figures by teammates Nick Corbett with 19 points and Mike Torre with 13 points.