Bench players give Lightning a big lift in first playoff game

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Towards the end of the first half of Sunday afternoon’s CUNYAC quarterfinals, Lehman head coach Steve Schulman turned towards his assistants and made a joke.

“Are these guys the bench or are they the starters?’” Schulman said. “They just came in and they lifted the game.”

The Lightning trailed by six points midway through the first half, but the stellar play of the bench — mainly Juan Carlos Guzman Nieves, who scored nine points and grabbed 11 rebounds, and John Brens, who had a team-high seven assists — propelled the Lightning to an comfortable 87-60 victory over the Hunter College Hawks. 

“We knew it was going to be tough because Hunter had already played a playoff game and got through all that anxiety,” Schulman said. “We had a little bit of anxiety early, but we knew that once we got the lead at halftime, we could kick it into overdrive.”

But the bench wasn’t the sole reason for Lehman’s turnaround. Junior forward Jean Marcial, who entered Sunday’s contest averaging 10 points per game, nearly tripled his scoring average with a career best 29 points.

“Last game, I had a good game on them, so I just tried to carry that confidence and bring it to the game today,” Marcial said. “I got a couple more touches than I usually do and I just knocked them down.”

Marcial knocked down his shots at a high percentage, shooting 12-of-18 from the field. The forward also tallied four assists, and his offensive contributions were necessary as the Lightning’s leading scorers this season, Andrew Utate and Damian Bellamy, were held in check with nine and six points, respectively.

“All year it was more the next guy up,” Marcial said. “Anybody can get hot on this team and we know that. It’s just tonight I got hot and my teammates kept pushing me.”

The Lightning got off to a rough start, trailing 24-18, but after inserting the bench and seeing the steady play of Marcial and Mylo Mitchell, who scored 15 points, the Lightning ended the half on a 22-9 run to take a 40-33 lead into the half.

“We had a whole week off of just pent-up energy,” Schulman said about the poor play. “You could see we were missing foul shots, we were missing layups. But the good thing is that we kept playing defense, and the defense kept us in the game.”

The Lightning never looked back in the second half, opening up the period on a 7-0 run. The Hawks cut the lead to 10 at 59-49, but that was the closest they would get as the Lightning went on another run, this time a 9-0 spurt to stretch to bump the lead back up to 18.

Lehman shot 50 percent in the second half and scored 47 points in a dominating performance to complete an 87-60 win.

The Lightning now travels to the City College of New York where they will take on the CCNY Beavers in the semifinals of the CUNYAC Tournament Wednesday night.

“Right now we got 1-0 under our belt, they haven’t played, so they got to get ready for us,” Marcial said about taking on the Beavers. “We’re just going to focus on what we can control.”

The Lightning dropped their two previous contests against CCNY this season, but Schulman believes that if his team replicates its performance against Hunter, they’ll be championship game bound.

“I think it’s just do more of the same,” Schulman said. “I told them, I think we have a little edge coming in because we got a playoff game under our belt.  We have to take that to our advantage. They’ve gotten the best of us twice but I think we’re up for the challenge.”

Steve Schulman, Lehman College, CUNYAC, Daniel Ynfante

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