Geoff Schneider

Wildcats Set To Take On Syracuse In Exhibition Contest Friday

10/25/2023 3:21:00 PM

EXHIBITION GAME #2
Daemen Wildcats vs. Syracuse Orange
DATE: Friday, Oct. 27
TIME: 7 p.m.
LOCATION: Syracuse, N.Y. | JMA Wireless Dome
LIVE STATS: via SU Athletics
LIVE VIDEO: ESPN+

JUMP BALL
Daemen plays the second of two exhibition games against Division I opponents when it takes on Syracuse University Friday night at the JMA Wireless Dome on the SU campus. The two teams also met prior to the 2019-20 season and The Orange posted a 90-71 victory.

SOLID START
Daemen opened its exhibition slate with a four-point (71-67) loss at the University at Buffalo Monday night. Daemen held a 65-61 lead with just over two minutes to play, but the Bulls used a 9-0 run to secure the win. Graduate student Joey Atkins (Watervliet, N.Y.) led all scorers with 19 points and also grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds.

RETURN OF THE MAC
Head coach Mike MacDonald returns for his 10th season on Daemen's bench and his 27^th overall as a collegiate head coach. Daemen has posted at least 20 wins in five of the last six seasons (Daemen only played 16 games during the COVID-19 shortened 2020-21 season) and MacDonald has led the Wildcats to a record of 179-74, three NCAA Division II Tournament appearances and the 2021 NCAA Division II East Region title. He has won more games at Daemen than during previous stints as the head coach at Canisius (108 wins in nine seasons) and Medaille (149 wins in eight seasons). MacDonald is among an elite fraternity of coaches to have achieved 100 victories across all three NCAA divisions. His overall career record stands at 436-300 and Daemen's 81-72 win over Roberts Wesleyan on Dec. 8, 2021 was the 400th of his career.

FAMILIAR FACES
Daemen returns all five starters and a total of 14 players from their 2022-23 team which went 20-8 overall and 12-4 in the East Coast Conference. The Wildcats advanced to the ECC Tournament championship game, where they suffered a 72-66 loss to top-seed St. Thomas Aquinas College. All-ECC selections Joey Atkins (Watervliet, N.Y.), Dylan Fasoyiro (Houston, Tex.), Nick MacDonald (Amherst, N.Y.) and Andrew Mason (Webster, N.Y.) all return in 2023-24. Atkins earned first-team All-ECC honors in his first season as a starter last year after averaging 11.9 points and 6.2 rebounds. He also ranked eighth among all Division II players in blocks (65). Fasoyiro averaged a team-high 13.4 points in his first season with the team, while MacDonald contributed 12.4 points. Mason averaged 10.9 points and led all three NCAA divisions in three-point field goal percentage (.516) last year. Veterans Ryan Salzberg (Manlius, N.Y.) and Justin Hemphill (Buffalo, N.Y.) also return. Salzberg, a 6-foot-4 point guard, started all 28 games last year and averaged 32 minutes a game. Hemphill, a 6-foot-6 forward, is coming off a breakout season in which he averaged 9.0 points and a team-high 6.5 rebounds off the bench. Three newcomers join the fold in 2023-24. Redshirt sophomore guard Jarius Jones (Gahanna, Ohio) spent the past two years at Ohio Dominican University. Freshmen Zach Philipkoski (New Harford, N.Y.) and Ryan Heath (Rochester, N.Y.) both earned New York State Class A all-state honors last winter and Philipkoski was also honored as the New York State Class A Player of the Year. Ayden Harrison (Clifton Park, N.Y.), Phil Nwugwo (Rochester, N.Y.) and Jackson Kulik (Webster, N.Y.) also join the mix after redshirting their freshman season last year.

SUSTAINED SUCCESS
The Daemen program has been built on sustained success, winning at least 19 games in 11 of the last 12 seasons. That span encompasses the end of Daemen's NAIA Era, its NCAA transition period and the first eight seasons of full NCAA Division II membership. The Wildcats have won 72% of their contests, going 247-98 in that span. Looking more recently, Daemen is 120-45 since the start of the 2017-18 season (.730 winning percentage).

ALL IN THE FAMILY
MacDonald's son Nick is a fifth-year senior guard at Daemen. He transferred to Daemen after playing his first two seasons at Division I Niagara.

CENTRAL NEW YORK CONNECTIONS
Daemen has several connections to Central New York and Syracuse basketball. Payton and Preston Shumpert (Syracuse, N.Y.) are in their second season with the Wildcats. Their father (Preston) played at Syracuse from 1998-2002. Graduate student Ryan Salzberg (Manlius, N.Y.) played at Fayetteville-Manlius High School before finishing his scholastic career at Bridgton Academy in Maine. Freshman Zach Philipkoski (New Hartford, N.Y.) enjoyed an outstanding high school career at New Harford High School. He was named the N.Y. Sportswriters Association's Class A Boys Basketball Player of the Year as a senior after he averaged 25.6 points, 9.2 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game while leading the New Hartford Spartans to the state semifinals. That came on the heels of a stellar junior season in which he averaged 22.8 points per game while leading the Spartans to the Class A state final and earned First Team All-State honors. He finished his prep career with 1,850 points, shattering the prior school record by more than 400 points.

BACK-TO-BACK-TO-BACK
Daemen earned three consecutive NCAA Division II Tournament berths from 2019 to 2021. The Wildcats won 24 games (NCAA era program record) and earned at-large bids to the NCAA tournament in 2019 and 2020. The Wildcats entered the 2021 tournament as the No. 2 seed in the East Region and picked up their first-ever NCAA tourney win with an 81-69 defeat of third-seeded Bloomfield in the opening round. The Wildcats then upset top-seeded Saint Thomas Aquinas in the regional championship game en route to the program's first regional championship and Elite Eight appearance. Daemen has posted 20 wins this last two seasons, but was denied an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament each year.

SCOUTING THE ORANGE
Syracuse went 17-15 overall and 10-10 in Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) play last season. It marked the final season in the storied career of Hall of Fame head coach Jim Boeheim, who led the Orangemen to 35 NCAA Tournament appearances in his 47 seasons on the bench. Longtime associate head coach Adrian Autry was introduced as the new head coach this past March. Two of the top three scorers from last year have transferred. Joe Girard, who made 88 three-pointers and averaged a team-high 16.4 points last year, has transferred to Clemson University. Jesse Edwards, a 6-foot-11 center who contributed 14.5 points and a team-high 10.3 rebounds per game last year, will spend his fifth year of eligibility at West Virginia University. Judah Mintz, a 6-foot-3 guard who averaged 16.3 points and 4.6 assists as freshman, tops the list of 10 returning players. Benny Williams, a 6-foot-9 forward and Chris Bell, a 6-foot-7 forward, also return. Williams started 24 games last year as a sophomore, while Bell started 30 of 32 games as freshman. Sophomore transfer JJ Starling, a 6-foot-4 guard who averaged 11.2 points per game at the University of Notre Dame last year, is expected to make immediate contributions.

ON THE HORIZON
Daemen officially opens the 2023-24 season next weekend (Nov. 3-5) when it makes the trek to Western Canada to take part in the Conference Commissioners Association (CCA) D2 Canadian Tipoff Classic. The Wildcats will take on Western Washington University, tournament host Simon Frasier University and Seattle Pacific University during the three-day event.

Daemen University features the premier NCAA Division II athletics program in the Buffalo-Niagara region, sponsoring 17 intercollegiate teams. For the latest information on Daemen Athletics, follow the Wildcats via social media on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, or sign up to receive customizable news alerts, e-mail newsletters and weekly schedule alerts.

Follow the Daemen men's basketball program on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at @DaemenMBB.

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