Eric Paschall Helps Men’s Basketball Open Season with a Bang

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Bronx, N.Y. (November 14, 2014) – Fordham freshman Eric Paschall came to Rose Hill with a lot of buildup. And he lived up to the hype in his collegiate debut, scoring 31 points, a school record for a freshman in his debut, and he added ten rebounds to lead the Rams to a 94-77 season-opening win over the New York Institute of Technology in the Rose Hill Gym.
 
Paschall scored from inside, with a few rim-rattling dunks, and from the outside, hitting four three-pointers, as he broke the former record for points by a freshman in his debut of 28, set last year by Jon Severe.
 

 
Paschall was hardly a one-man show as Ryan Rhoomes also recorded a double-double, scoring 12 points and adding a game-high 13 rebounds, while Christian Sengfelder added 17 points and seven rebounds in his collegiate debut and Mandell Thomas finished with 14 points and three steals.
 

Fordham jumped out to an 11-0 lead just under two minutes into the game with four of those points coming from Rhoomes, before the Bears scored eight straight to make it a three-point game, 11-8, with 17:20 left in the first.
 
An 8-3 Fordham run bumped the Rams' lead to eight, 19-11, following an Antwoine Anderson layup two minutes later.
 
After NYIT cut the Fordham advantage back to three, 19-16, a Paschall layup started an 8-0 Fordham spurt as the Rams took a 27-16 lead on a Thomas three-pointer with 13:22 left.
 
NYIT managed to cut the deficit all the way back to one, 33-32, with 5:43 on the clock but a Sengfelder three-pointer ignited an 18-4 run as the Rams took their biggest lead of the half, 51-36, after a pair of Rhoomes free throws with 17 seconds left.
 
The Rams put the game away when they opened the second half with a 12-1 run, led by five points from Paschall, taking a 60-39 lead 2:39 into the half and the Rams would extend the lead to as many as 27 midway through the period.
 
Bryan Smith added eleven points and five assists for the Rams while Nemanja Zarkovic dished out a game-high six assists.
 
Fordham returns to action on Sunday, November 16, as the Rams travel to State College, Pennsylvania, to face the Penn State Nittany Lions at 5:00 p.m.
 
Notes
The Rams won their home opener for the second straight year and are now 74-32 (.705) in season openers since 1908, 78-18 (.813) in home openers… The 94 points are the most scored by a Fordham team in its opener since the Rams netted 100 against Adelphi in 1993… The Rams recorded 22 assists on 34 baskets with every starter recording at least one assist… Fordham controlled the boards, outrebounding NYIT, 45-24, and scoring 25 second chance points to eight for the Bears… Senior walk-on Erando Halilaj scored his first collegiate points with a basket late in the game