By Budd Bailey
The task for Canisius guard Paul McMillan was immense. He had the ball about 85 feet from the basket, his team down a point with six seconds left.
McMillan raced down the court, avoiding Niagara defenders along the way. When he reached the area around the basket, he threw up an acrobatic shot that danced around the rim. If it drops, the Golden Griffins win. If it doesn’t, the Purple Eagles win.
It didn’t drop. Niagara won 64-63 at the Koessler Athletic Center Friday night.
Games don’t get closer than that.
“My mindset was just try to go in,” McMillan said. “I didn’t want to shoot a jump shot. I just wanted to go in tough, and maybe get fouled. If I don’t get fouled, try to finish the lay-up. I felt like it was going in. It was right there on the mark, and kind of rolled out.”
On the other side, Niagara’s Jahari Williamson could only stand and watch. He said he thought to himself, “It was just like, wow. I said, wow.”
This was an entertaining, interesting game between two teams that haven’t been playing well lately. Both the Eagles and Griffins were 2-7 in MAAC play this season. Niagara had lost five in a row and had zero wins on the road for the season, and Canisius had dropped four of five.
“I’m proud of our guys, fighting back in the second half and making one more play than them,” Niagara coach Greg Paulus said.
The Golden Griffins came out with a great deal of energy right from the start. They took the lead in the first minute and held it for more than 35 minutes. That was in spite of the fact that Jasman Sangha missed the game with an injury, which was bad news for a Canisius team that doesn’t have a lot of depth when it is healthy.
Dylan Godfrey was promoted into the starting lineup, and acquitted himself well. He finished with 12 points.
The forward’s role was “just to bring energy,” Godfrey said. “Obviously we didn’t get the result we wanted.”
Even so, the substitution patterns of the two teams indicated that Niagara figured to be fresher down the stretch. Seven Eagles played 25 minutes, and an eighth added 16. For Canisius, the five starters all checked in with at least 30 minutes on the court.
“I couldn’t be prouder of the effort,” Golden Griffins coach Jim Christian said.
Sure enough, Niagara finally got over the hump to take the lead with eight straight points fairly late in the second half. Olumide Adelodun’s three-pointer in that stretch gave Niagara its first lead, which it never relinquished.
“That was a big shot, because it finally got us over the hump,” Paulus said. “It gave us some momentum. We were able to extend it.”
The Eagles led 58-53 with three minutes to go, which is when McMillan (27 points for the night) became a virtual one-man band in keeping Canisius in the game. He scored eight points in that span, including a three-pointer that cut the lead to 64-63. The guard simply couldn’t get the last shot to fall.
It was the latest chapter in a rivalry that only seems as if it started right after James Naismith invented basketball. (OK, the first game actually was in the 1904-05 season.)
The funny part of that fact is that only one player on either team – Canisius’ Cam Palesse – had ever played in a Niagara-Canisius game before Friday night. Even Christian was getting his first look at the rivalry, which helped draw a bigger-than-average crowd and generate a bit of electricity in the building.
“These are rivalries within conferences,” he said. “They make college basketball good. These guys haven’t been here. It was real fun when guys would play against each other for three or four years. Those days are probably gone, but it was still a good atmosphere.”
“Our first meeting when we came back, we told them that this is one of the oldest rivalries in college basketball,” Paulus said. “It’s right down the road, and there have been some great coaches and players and games. … We want to respect this game. We have to understand that we are lucky to be a part of it. In my six years here, we’ve had a number of great games. This was another incredible game.”
“I liked everything about it,” said the Purple Eagles’ Jaeden Marshall, who came off the bench to score 18 points. “The crowd was into it. It was a great experience. Everyone stepped up.”
They’ll get to do it again on February 12, at Niagara.
“That’s the good part about it,” McMillan said.
(Follow Budd on X.com via @WDX2BB)
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