Box Score
WESTFIELD, Mass. -- Playing competitive basketball in consecutive seasons for the first time in more than a decade, junior forward Julian Sanchez (Willimantic) scored  a career-high 15 points on 7-of-10 shooting and the Eastern Connecticut State University men's basketball team never trailed in an emphatic 89-65 season-opening victory over highly-regarded St. John Fisher College in the opening round of the Rick Martin/Hampton Inn Classic hosted by Westfield State University Friday evening at the Woodward Center.

Eastern advances to face host Westfield State in Saturday's 2 p.m. championship game. The Owls climbed out of a nine-point halftime hole by missing all 11 of their first-half three-point attempts to edge St. Joseph's University (L.I.), 91-84, in Friday night's first game.

Despite coming off its losingest season in 30 years, Eastern was never headed in routing St. John Fisher in the first meeting between the programs in 50 years. Eastern, ranked eighth in the nine-team Little East Conference last year with an -8.2 scoring margin and seventh in points allowed (75.7), outscored St. John Fisher 16-2 over five minutes to open up a 19-point, 35-16 lead with five minutes left in the first half, and after the Cardinals were able to close the gap to seven midway through the second half, Eastern used consecutive three-point field goals from 6-foot-7 inch junior forward Jalen Hamblin (West Hartford) and sophomore guard Elijah Jean-Guillaume (New Haven) in a run of ten straight points that allowed the Warriors to regain a 17-point lead with 6:33 left en route to their 24-point win.

Sanchez (13 points) and Hamblin (11) combined for 24 of their combined game total of 33 points in the second half on 10-of-17 field goal shooting. Junior guard Dominick Dao (Terryville), last year's second-leading scorer behind Hamblin, scored 17 of his game-high 19 points on 6-of-9 field goal shooting in the first half, with sophomore guard Pedro Perry (New London) adding 12 of his game total of 14 points in 12 minutes off the bench on 5-of-7 shooting that helped the Warriors move out to a 14-point, 45-31 lead. Both Dao and Perry sank two of three three-pointers in the half.  Hamblin finished with 18 points (7-for12 FG), six rebounds and three steals, with Dao contributing four rebounds and two steals.  

Dao sparked the decisive 16-2 scoring run in the first half by scoring the first seven points on a pair of free throws, a conventional three-point play, and a jumper.

Ten of the 11 players to see time in the game were returnees from a year ago for Eastern, which was missing sophomore guard Jeremiah Graham (Jacksonville, FL), who started 19 games a year ago. Hamblin had been slowed in the pre-season this year due to injury.

After a layoff of more than a decade after gaining high school All-State honors in 2013, Sanchez averaged 4.8 points and 4.9 rebounds in an average of 15 minutes a year ago.

Senior forward Eric Kegler led SJF with 17 points on 50 percent field goal shooting, with seven-foot senior forward Connor Williams adding 11 points and a game-high nine rebounds. The Cardinals were coming off last year's 19-win season and were only two years removed from a 22-8 season in 2022/23 when they won the Empire 8 Conference championship and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Eastern and Westfield are old rivalries, having played 70 times dating back to the 1948/49 season, but haven't meet since the Warriors knocked off the top-seed Owls, 74-60, to win their first ECAC New England tournament title at the Woodward Center in 2012/13. That victory was Eastern's fourth straight in the series, the first triumph in that stretch a wild 116-114 home Eastern home win in 2004/05. The Owls finished 19-8 last year, bowing out in the semifinals of the MASCAC tournament, 83-74, at second-seeded Bridgewater State University.