It felt like déjà vu. Down 12-3 in the opening minutes of play on Jan. 30 against Johnson & Wales University, the Emerson men's basketball team was seeing double. Head Coach Hank Smith said it was just like watching a replay of their undoing against Saint Joseph's College of Maine two days earlier, when the Lions were unraveled by lethargic play and a perfect storm of bad shots and poor execution They fell to the Monks, 71-63.
After posting a 4-14 record in their inaugural season, the Emerson men's volleyball team received quite the consolation prize from the Great Northeast Athletic Conference scheduling committee: a 2010 season opener against Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ranked 14th in the nation, followed the next day by a match-up against Rivier College, ranked fourth.
Posters of movie stars, popular singers and famous athletes are some of the typical ways a college student likes to jazz up the plain walls of a dorm room. And while sophomore volleyball player Steve Selnick does have a large photo of his role model tacked up, it's not of a famous basketball player or hip-hop artist.
It took some time to get the ball rolling, but by the end of the first half, the Lions ran with their lead and never looked back. On Jan. 28, the Emerson women's basketball team took charge against Pine Manor early, bettering their Great Northeast Athletic Conference record to 4-1 with an 84-33 win over the 0-13 Gators.