QC butts Rams; wins second NYCAC championship in four years
Amy Goldstein
Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: Sports
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The Philadelphia Rams can say that they were beaten by vertigo on Sunday evening, but it was the Queens College Knights' dominant play that sent them into a dizzying state of mind.
No song but U2's "Vertigo" was playing in the Pratt Recreation Center at C.W. Post as the third-seeded Rams (21-9) called a time-out in the second half of the New York Collegiate Athletic Conference men's basketball championship. And no other team won the game but the fourth-seeded Knights (22-8), by a score of 82-74.
In the game, QC senior forward John Sikiric wowed the crowd of about 600 fans with 29 points, including seven three-pointers, en route to being named the NYCAC tournament MVP. He bested Philadelphia's standout player and NYCAC player of the year by just one point, as Rams guard Tayron Thomas scored 28 points.
And that's just how the game was for the most part. A nail-biter in which the game's final score was the largest margin of scoring. Queens College led by just one point at the half, 45-44.
The fans on both sides knew the gravity of the game as well as the players did, and they took it to the floor, stomping their feet on the bleachers and shouting "Defense! Defense!" in sync with the players on the sidelines. Well, almost in sync.
But one thing that was certainly in sync was the coordination of both teams. The fast-paced play, particularly in the first half, yielded a combined 75 rebounds for both sides.
The fans were also rather vocal against the calls of the main referee, lecturing him multiple times on how to call a game. But Coach Kyrk Peponakis supported the calls of the referees. "It's a tough, physical game," he said. "They [Philadelphia] kept us working, and the ref's calls were very good."
But even though some Queens College fans were disappointed with officials' rulings, they couldn't be happier with the final result. And neither could the players, including Sikiric.
"I can't put into words how this feels," he said in a post-game interview. "It still feels so good."
Sikiric, who scored 22 of his points in the first half, said that the team's strategy was attrition. The goal was to "wear them out toward the end of the game, and knock them down." But even when the Knights went on a 10-2 tear in the final three minutes to close out the scoring, the team never stopped working.