Men’s basketball team. Photo credit: Adisa Sobers
By Richard Heaton
On November 10, the York College Men’s basketball season kicked off and five games in, it’s hard not to smile. For their first game of the season, which was at home, York played Maine Maritime and beat them by a score of 79-72.
They then went on to win each of their next two games and for a short time were had the number one seed in CUNYAC. In total, the team has played five games during a nine game span before taking nearly two weeks off around Thanksgiving.
During those five games, York went 3-2 and had some great individual performances, by both seasoned players and newcomers.
One highlight of the teams first week of play was the dominance of senior Darin Dove, who after five games was one of the best point scorers among all of CUNY’s senior colleges. Against Cairn University on November 13, he scored 28 points while making eight three point shots.
Eight three pointers in a single game is incredible, only six players total even have eight on the season and they all played in at least four games. His total for the season is 20, which is the most among all senior college players. He has one more than the runner up, Baruch’s William Sixsmith.
Dove had his next 20+ point game on November 17, where he scored 30 against Morrisville, becoming the first York player with multiple 20 point games. For the season, Dove has 92 points, only three other players have more points. Two of the players who have scored more have played at least 60 more minutes.
Five games is a small sample size, but if he’s already having one of the best stretches that we have seen here at York. With a 26 game schedule, continuing at this pace would put Dove at around 500 points. The last time a York player reached 400 points in a season was in 2013.
Another highlight of the young season belongs to senior Taishaun Forehand-Jenkins. He is the only other York player to have a 20 point game this season. For the season, he has 67 points, which is the tenth most among senior colleges. He also has 25 assists, which is the second most.
Lastly, Devine Chisholm has been putting up a remarkable opening stretch, which culminated in his claiming CUNYAC’s Rookie of the Week honor. That’s right, Chisholm is a freshman and has been putting up solid numbers. He scored 17 points during his fifth game of the season and has eight steals.
There’s still a lot of season left to go. York has another 21 games to play through before the CUNYAC championships begin and a lot can happen. Of those 21 games, 15 are against other teams within CUNYAC and will mostly determine the teams chances at making the CUNYAC playoffs.
York will play in three conference games before the York Invitational takes place December 14. The first is on November 30 against Brooklyn College, the second is on December 4 against Hunter, and the third is on December 7 against Lehman.
Of those three teams, Brooklyn is the only one who finished the first stretch of the season with a better record than York as they are 4-1. Hunter is 2-2 and Lehman is 1-2. As a result, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to assume that York could win two out of those three games.
Now that we are five games into the season, and have a general idea of how well the team is playing, it’s also time to make a prediction on how well we think the team can play for the remainder of the season. With the amount of success the team has been having so far, a season with at least 15 wins could be in their future.
