VESTAL, N.Y. — Two games into Niagara’s season, the Purple Eagles might have answered a question that took all season a year ago. When the game is in the balance, and you need a basket, somebody has to create that opportunity. Two Niagara guards made their case to be the go-to guy on Saturday.
JUCO transfer Trenton Walters assumed that responsibility in a gritty, grimy road game against Binghamton. He scored 18 of his 23 points in 17 second-half minutes, after playing just eight minutes in the first half off the bench. Walters is listed generously at 5-foot-9, but he had the heart of a lion down the stretch in Niagara’s 67-59 win over the Bearcats.
With the clock winding under two minutes, Walters hit an and-one floater, beating Jeremiah Quigley off the dribble into the paint and kissing the ball high off the backboard and through the hoop to extend Niagara’s lead to five.
On the very next trip down the floor, he made the exact same move, and finished through contact on the much bigger Zyier Beverly. He iced the game with free throws after that.
“I thought he played with great verve,” Niagara head coach Greg Paulus said. “I thought he was a guy that got other people opportunities as well. He did a good job getting the ball into the paint, and the verve that he had was really contagious for us, he was dynamic out there.”
For Levell Sanders’ Bearcats, it was a game that slipped away.
Walters hit one of his three triples on the afternoon with 5:34 to play, right in Ryan Richardson’s face on the left wing. It cut Binghamton’s largest lead of the night – seven – down to four, and the Purple Eagles’ guards kept making plays, setting up for his back-to-back finishes at the basket.
“That’s what it’s about,” Sanders said. “It’s about guys making plays down the stretch. He made the same kind of play twice. They ghosted out of a screen, and he got downhill two times in a row and was able to finish over some big guys.”
Walters wasn’t the only Purple Eagle guard who shined in crunch time. Justin Page had the lowest usage rate of any guard in the MAAC last season during conference play. But on Saturday, he was steady for 38 minutes as a lead scoring option.
He scored nine points in the first twelve minutes, getting the game started for Niagara. Then, he broke a five-minute Purple Eagle scoring drought with the first bucket of the second half. When Binghamton went on the killshot run to take a 47-40 lead, he was the one to stop the bleeding and get Niagara back on the board.
With three minutes left, after Niagara had come back to tie the game at 49, Page found himself open in the corner and drilled the go-ahead triple. Moments later, he found Reggie Prudhomme in the other corner for a huge three.
“He had a really good offseason for us,” Paulus said. “He was really aggressive today, we want him to be aggressive.”
Page finished with 20 points, the most he’s scored in a Niagara uniform.
Paulus is still very much figuring out what his best lineups are in which situations. Page and Will Shortt are the only two returning players on the roster, but for the new-look Purple Eagles to pass their first crunch time test is huge. The low-scoring, grind-it-out style game with multiple scoring droughts is the exact type of game that the Purple Eagles will play in the MAAC.
“The ability to learn each other, to go through experiences like this,” Paulus said. “For us to be able to find a way to win against a tough, physical team on the road, that was a step forward for us.”
Niagara’s non-conference schedule is full of opportunities to play in these types of games. Four more games are projected to finish with a one-possession margin by KenPom, including two on the road. Albeit, those games are against four teams with KenPom rankings that would be in the bottom three of the MAAC.
The non-conference slate is all about figuring out how your team will react in different situations. The Purple Eagles have a lot of work to do, but Saturday gave them a springboard.
