Five hours before No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama square off Saturday night in football, the top two junior college basketball programs in the country will face off in New York.
No. 1 College of Southern Idaho will face No. 2 Monroe College at 3 p.m. in the first-ever Mustangs Invitational at the Monroe Atheltic Complex (MAC) in downtown New Rochelle, N.Y.
“This is as high a level junior college game as you will see,” said Iona associate head coach Jared Grasso, who has recruited numerous JUCO players to his program, including former Monroe standout Randy Dezouvre. “The No. 1 and No. 2 JUCO programs in the nation on the first weekend of the season is unheard of.”
According to the NJCAA, only one other time in recent memory have the NJCAA’s top two Division I men’s teams met head-to-head so early in the season. (No. 1 Indian RIver vs. No. 2 Chipola in 2008).
In the 2011 NJCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championships last March, the Golden Eagles defeated the Mustangs 93-76 in a tough semifinal. While CSI went on to win the national title, Monroe finished third.
But the rivalry goes back even further. In 2009 Monroe defeated CSI 78-76 on a buzzer-beater by Dezouvre and in the 2006 National Championships Monroe beat CSI 78-72, giving coach Monroe head coach Jeff Brustad a 2-1 lifetime record against CSI.
“The preseason polls say that these are the NJCAA’s best two teams so as confident as we are about our prospects for the season, this is as tough an early test as you can have,” Brustad said. “Are we looking forward to the challenge? You bet.”
New York-area basketball currently features a number of players who honed their skills at the JUCO level — including Iona’s Mike Glover, the preseason MAAC Player of the Year and the St. John’s duo of Nurideen Lindsey and God’sgift Achiuwa.
Yet the words “junior college” are almost dirty words in the New York area — where high school players sometimes mistakenly believe prep school can solve all their academic woes, as I detailed in this earlier story.
“When I was at Lackawanna Junior College in Pennsylvania, I felt like Philly, Ohio, [in] those places the kids were perfectly happy going to junior college and they saw the positives that it could be for them,” said Roselle (N.J) Catholic head coach Dave Boff.
“But when I would come back and recruit in Jersey — Union County, Essex County — I felt like the kids and the parents just thought that junior college was a bad word and they didn’t want to hear it and they didn’t think it was a good option for their kids.”
Still, this event will feature several potential future D-1 players, including Orlando Sanchez, Tauron Bailey and Marco Bourgault of Monroe.
Sanchez holds offers from UMass, Providence, LSU, Rhode Island, Florida International and Baylor, according to Monroe assistant Brock Erickson.
He played on the Dominican Republic National Team under Kentucky coach John Calipari and is interested in the Wildcats, but does not currently hold an offer.
Along with Monroe, CSI, Genesee, Westchester and Harcum will be participating in the event, which tips off Thursday night at 7 p.m.. Admission to the tournament is free for anyone with a Monroe college ID and $3 for all others.
(Gary Axelbank contributed reporting)
