OSWEGO — The Oswego State men’s basketball team will begin there season this Friday Nov. 16 against Elmira at 7:30 p.m. The Lakers finished last season just a game over .500 with a (14-13) record. With there top two seniors in Ian Schupp and Jamir Ferebee gone, Tyler Pierre who averaged 10.4 points per game for the Lakers last year will look to only improve from there. They will have six freshmen on the squad as they look to get back the game they lost against Elmira last year by a score of 103-90.
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SUNYAC Conference Announces New Format for Fall 2020
OSWEGO, NY — On Wednesday, June 17th, the State University of New York Athletic Conference announced changes to the Fall 2020 Season regarding four sports. This change affects women’s tennis, women’s volleyball, and both men’s and women’s soccer, all sports offered by the conference. This decision was made Monday, June 15th, by the SUNYAC Board of Directors during its weekly conference meeting. The Board is made up of one representative from each member school, making up 10 individuals. This announcement has two separate changes that comes a few months before the fall season that will allow division three athletics to continue.
The first switch pertains to women’s tennis moving to the Spring 2021 season, which would align the conference with the current NCAA Division III tournament that already takes place in the spring season. The conference has eight of their ten members in the women’s tennis conference as Buffalo State and Potsdam do not offer the sport. The SUNYAC has been looking to make this change for several years, so the current situation allows the conference to evaluate the potential move. Some conferences have their season in the fall due to weather in the region, making their conference champion play for a NCAA title in the spring season.
For the other three sports, the SUNYAC has decided to split the conference into two different divisions that will compete against each other during the regular season. The divisions are split using Interstate 81 in Central New York, that goes from Oswego to Cortland. The West Division will contain Brockport, Buffalo State, Fredonia, Geneseo, and Oswego while the East Division will consist of Cortland, New Paltz, Oneonta, Plattsburgh, and Potsdam. The change will affect volleyball along with men’s and women’s soccer. Each team would play every opponent in their given division twice with a home and home series. At the end of the season, the top two teams of each division will secure a playoff berth to the SUNYAC playoffs. The same playoff format will be used from years past with all semi final games being played on November 4th, and all finals games being played on November 7th across all three sports. The main reason for this switch was of course to decrease travel time and costs as teams would not need to stay overnight for long road trips. The other benefit is over course the fact that players and team staff will be in contact with less individuals. This move can also be found around many other division III conferences like the NEAC, the conference Morrisville is a part of.
The conference has also stated that the institutions still have the authority to schedule non-conference match ups outside of division play. SUNYAC continued to say that colleges could schedule games against opponents from the other division, with these games not having any affect on the conference standings.
Moving forward, Oswego State Laker fans can expect fall sport’s schedules to be released by the end of July. The Lakers kicked off their season last year around the end of August. Till then, WTOP 10 will continue to update readers on all off season news to keep you up to date on your favorite Oswego State team.
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Oswego men’s basketball extends win streak to 12 games in historic night
GENESEO, N.Y. – The Lakers mens basketball team is on fire right now and they kept it rolling on Tuesday night when they matched up with the Geneseo Knights on the road. The Lakers took the momentum early on in the first half of play and held onto it for most of the first half before a late rally from the Knights. The Knights went on a 8-2 run in the final three minutes of the first half to cut the Lakers lead to only one leaving Oswego with a 33-32 score at the half. Jeremiah Sparks caused problems for the Knights in the first half shooting over 65% from the field, while shooting 75% from the three point line. Sparks led the Lakers with 15 points in the first half and with his 15th point scored Sparks joined an exclusive club at Oswego becoming the 19th ever Laker to record 1,000 career points in a career.
After letting the Knights come back in the last minutes of the first half, The Lakers got off to another great start in the second. Oswego jumped out to a twelve point lead over the Knights in only four minutes into the second half now leading 46-34. The Laker defense really stepped up causing the Knights to miss shots. Sparks would not cool down from the first half and after his three, the Lakers would lead 53-36, with Sparks having 26 points with 13 minutes still remaining in the game. The Knights couldn’t do enough to crawl back into the game as the Lakers kept attacking on both sides of the court.
Oswego ended up dropping 100 points on the Knights for a final of 100-62 and extending their winning streak to 12 games. Sparks led the team with 26 points in his historic night while going 10 for 13 from the field. The Lakers had three other players record double-digit points this evening. Cartier Bowman finished with ten points, as well as Achille Anderson, and Joey Rowback finished with 19 points, including five three pointers from beyond the arc,
The Lakers improve to 16-2,10-1 SUNYAC and Geneseo falls to 7-10,3-6 SUNYAC. The Lakers will return home on Friday, January 27th at 7:30 for their first home game of the new semester to take on the Plattsburgh Cardinals for their annual Coaches vs. Cancer weekend.
IMAGE COURTESY OF OSWEGO ATHLETICS
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Mens Baseball Sweeps Fredonia in Weekend Action
ROCHESTER, NY – It was a successful weekend for the Lakers as they convincingly beat the Fredonia Blue Devils in both of their encounters this weekend. Game won was nothing short of a blowout that saw the Lakers dominate Fredonia with a final score of 12-1. The momentum was in favor of the Lakers from the start as they truly dominated this game. Fredonia would score their only run of the game in the top of the second inning. Senior Colin Williams was on fire this game as he finished with one run and two RBI’s. It really was a team effort however as the Lakers were firing on all cylinders from start to finish. The Lakers looked to take this momentum into the next day where they had a rematch against the Blue Devils.The Lakers kept the momentum rolling the next day when they knocked off Fredonia for the second time. This game was a lot closer and saw both teams fighting hard for a victory. The Lakers started off hot scoring three runs in the bottom of the first inning. The Blue Devils weren’t going to let history repeat itself as they bounced right back tying the game in the third. The Lakers then went on to score three more runs and the game looked like it was shaping up to be another Lakers victory. Fredonia was not done however as they came right back and scored three more runs to tie the game at six. After this the game got out of hand with the Lakers completely taking over. Freshman Emil Sander would score the Lakers final run to give them a five run victory as the Lakers completed the weekend sweep. The Lakers look to keep this momentum rolling as they head to New Paltz this Friday at 3pm.
IMAGE PROVIDED BY OSWEGO ATHLETICS
