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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

Tufts to face Salem State in NCAA first round

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Despite falling to the Williams Ephs (19-8) in the semifinals of the NESCAC tournament, the Tufts Jumbos (20-6) secured a spot in the Div. III NCAA men’s basketball tournament for the second consecutive year. The Jumbos will travel to Bobby Wanzer Court in Pittsford, N.Y. to face off against the Salem State Vikings (17-10). According to sophomore guard Ethan Feldman, the team is balancing feelings of elation and anticipation.

It’s exciting, but since we made it last year, I don’t think we’re satisfied quite yet,” he said. “It’s going to be a little different this year playing away as opposed to home, because I felt like the crowd really helped us. We want to make it farther than we did last year.”

Coach Bob Sheldon said the squad is enthusiastic to be in playoffs for the second year in a row.

“The last time we made it [before last year] was 11 years ago, and we went 10 years without it ... and now we get to go twice in a row,” he said. “We worked hard for it. We’re excited, and it’s like we’re starting [again] right now, day one of playoff time.”

The Jumbos’ first-round opponents, the Vikings, automatically qualified for the tournament by defeating the Worcester State Lancers (10-17) in the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference (MASCAC) tournament championship. In doing so, Salem State won its 17th men’s basketball conference title since 1990.

Although the two teams have yet to face off this season, Tufts and Salem State have shared eight opponents. In those games, Tufts has assembled a 5-3 record, while Salem State has fared worse at 3-6 (with two of those wins coming against the 7-19 Framingham State Rams).

The Jumbos and the Vikings last played during the 2015-16 season in Salem, Mass., when now-senior tri-captain center Tom Palleschi registered a double-double with 20 points and 11 rebounds and now-junior guard Vincent Pace put up a game-high 25 points.

We’re in [the Big Four] tournament every year with [Salem State], but we didn’t play them this year,” Sheldon said. “They play different defenses. They press a little bit. They want to run, and we want to run, so we’re happy about that, because we feel we’re pretty good at a fast-paced game. I expect it to be a high-scoring affair.”

Feldman said the Vikings’ personnel changes, including several new players in key positions, have affected their offensive tendencies.

“We do know that this year, they play sort of a freelance, sort of loose offense, which is different from a lot of teams we’ve been playing recently," he said. "They don’t tend to run [a consistent] offense, or they do better when they’re just running in transition. So if we can slow them down and make them play their half-court offense, I think we’ll have a good chance of winning.”

Salem State’s head coach, Chris Harvey, previously served as an assistant coach at Tufts for two years.During the 2005-06 season, Harvey’s first year in Medford, the Jumbos garnered a program-record 23 wins (later matched by last year’s squad) and reached the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA tournament.

Although he remembers his former assistant fondly, Sheldon expressed confidence that Harvey would not necessarily have inside information on exposing the Jumbos’ weaknesses.

“I held back a couple things, so he doesn’t know everything just in case we were going to meet,” Sheldon joked. “There’s a play or two that we have up our sleeve.”

Moving from off-court to on-court contributors, the Vikings’ two statistically strongest players are junior guard Shaquan Murray and senior co-captain forward Marcus Faison.Murray is the Vikings’ leading scorer with 15.9 points per game, while Faison averages 15.1 points and a team-best 11.1 rebounds per game. The latter figure ranks Faison as the 25th most prolific per-game rebounder in the nation.

Against Worcester State, the duo demonstrated their importance to the team’s success. Murray scored a game- and career-high 31 points on 11-for-15 shooting, and Faison notched a double-double with 20 points and 11 rebounds. For his efforts, Faison was named the tournament’s most valuable player.

One area where the Jumbos hope to improve is on the offensive and defensive glass, having been outrebounded 48-29 against the Ephs. Sheldon conceded that the issue was a concern but expressed his confidence that the poor showing in the NESCAC semifinal was an outlier rather than the start of a trend.

“The Williams game was an anomaly. We weren’t ourselves,” he said. “But I think it’s a wake up call to us … now, you know, [if you] lose, you go home ... [If] we get outrebounded, we’re not playing again. So we had a nice meeting after the selection committee. We had our live viewing thing, just like [Div. I] does, except there was no food, no cameras, no nothing. After that, we had a 45-minute team meeting, and we just talked about our goals and how we're going to get there. Our goal is to get to the Final Four, and then we'll adjust from there. So we’re ready to go.”

The Jumbos and Vikings tip off on Friday at 5:30 p.m.