FAN2018-19 NORTHEAST GUIDE CONFERENCE NCAA DIVISION I ATHLETICS TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcome ......................................................3 WELCOME About the NEC ...........................................4-5 Athletic Achievements ...............................6-7 NEC Championships .....................................8 FANS! Bryant ...........................................................9 Central Connecticut ....................................10 Dear NEC Fans, Fairleigh Dickinson .....................................11 LIU Brooklyn ...............................................12 Now in its 38th year, the NEC strives to be the most fan-friendly athletic conference in Mount St. Mary’s .........................................13 the country. With that in mind, this brochure aims to serve as a handy reference guide to Robert Morris ..............................................14 the league’s 10 member institutions, nearly 200 coaches and over 4,500 NCAA Division Sacred Heart ...............................................15 I student-athletes. St. Francis Brooklyn ....................................16 So what is it that makes the NEC so special? Saint Francis U ............................................17 Wagner .......................................................18 First and foremost, our core mission remains unchanged: to provide opportunities for student-athletes to achieve their fullest potential in the classroom, in athletic competition NEC SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDE and in the community. OFFICIAL WEBSITE We couldn’t be any prouder of our student-athletes, www.northeastconference.org who averaged a league record 3.28 GPA for the 2017-18 academic year as 82 percent of NEC teams FACEBOOK finished with a 3.0 GPA or better. A record 2,476 @NECSports student-athletes were named to the NEC Academic TWITTER Honor Roll in 2017-18, and the 720 tabbed to the @NECSports Commissioner’s Honor Roll with GPAs of 3.75 or higher also set a new conference standard. YOUTUBE www.youtube.com/NECsports On the field, eight NEC student-athletes earned All-American status and seven teams were ranked SNAPCHAT nationally in their respective sports last season. Just as importantly as wins and losses, the @NECSports NEC continues to take great pride in its student-athletes’ commitment to good sportsman- NEC OVERTIME! ship and giving back to their local communities. Conference members recorded 31,400 www.necovertime.com hours of community service over the course of the 2017-18 academic year. INSTAGRAM We encourage fans to follow us through the NEC’s popular online digital network @NECSports (NECFrontRow.com), as well as on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and YouTube (@ NECsports). Likewise, please visit our official website (NortheastConference.org), as well PERISCOPE as the NEC Overtime! blog (NECOvertime.com) for in-depth coverage of the Conference. @NECSports We hope the information at your fingertips in this Fan Guide will give you a better un- derstanding of the NEC and its member institutions. Thank you for your #NECPride and continued support! Sincerely, Noreen Morris Commissioner NEC PROFILE • The 10 institutions of higher learning that comprise the NEC give the league a six-state geographic footprint, including access to markets including New York (#1), Pittsburgh (#24), Baltimore (#26), Hartford/ New Haven (#33), Providence (#53) and Altoona/Johnstown/State Col- lege (#106). • More than 55,000 students attend NEC institutions, while approxi- mately 4,500 participate in intercollegiate athletics. • NEC associate members include Duquesne in football and women’s bowling, and Hobart and Saint Joseph’s in men’s lacrosse. • NEC schools have a combined alumni base of over 500,000 graduates. 2018-19 NORTHEAST CONFERENCE FAN GUIDE 3 ABOUT THE NORTHEAST CONFERENCE SPORTSMANSHIP & RESPECT Northeast Conference member institutions value the principles of sportsmanship and the ideal of pursuing victory with honor. As such, the NEC Team Sportsmanship Award program recognizes those teams and student-athletes who best exemplify these traits in the spirit of competition. The NEC honored 22 teams for their commitment to sportsmanship during the 2017-18 academic year with CCSU being honored a conference-best six times. Since the NEC Team Sportsmanship program was implemented in 2008-09, Saint Francis U has won a conference-best 37 awards. The NEC also continued its long-running participation in the NCAA’s Respect Campaign, an effort to promote an environment of respect and integrity at Conference events. IN THE CLASSROOM NEC student-athletes averaged a record 3.28 GPA for the 2017-18 academic year. All ten NEC institutions finished the year with over a 3.0 GPA and 82 per- cent of NEC teams posted a 3.0 or better GPA. A record 2,476 student-athletes were named to the NEC Academic Honor Roll in 2017-18, and the 720 tabbed to the Commissioner’s Academic Honor Roll with GPAs of 3.75 or higher also set a new conference standard. The NCAA honored 30 NEC teams with pub- lic recognition awards for exceptional academic performance with respect to their latest Academic Progress Rate scores. This landed the NEC 12th nationally among all DI conferences. NEC institutions also ranked among the nation’s elite in Graduation Success Rate (GSR) figures released by the NCAA with 55 teams achieving a perfect 100 percent GSR in their respective sports and 59 percent earning a GSR of over 90 percent. Men’s and women’s basketball student-athletes finished sixth and seventh nationally in DI. NATIONAL EXPOSURE Through its longstanding partnership with ESPN, the NEC Men’s Basketball Tour- nament Championship game has been a staple of the network’s “Championship Week” programming since the 1980’s. In addition, the NEC women’s basketball championship game and multiple regular season men’s basketball games are annually televised on ESPNU. The NEC also broadcasts numerous events on ESPN3, which serves as the league’s exclusive home for its football broadcast package, and CBS Sports Network. 4 2018-19 NORTHEAST CONFERENCE FAN GUIDE ABOUT THE NORTHEAST CONFERENCE IN THE COMMUNITY NEC FRONT ROW The NEC, its member institutions and student-ath- One of the landmark moments in Northeast Conference history came letes have made community involvement an im- back in August, 2012 with the launch of NEC Front Row. portant piece of its mission. Now celebrating its six-year anniversary, the NEC’s popular digital plat- In 2017-18, the NEC Student-Athlete Advisory form continued to be a unifying thread among conference members Committee (SAAC) took an even bigger bite out and a one-stop portal for the league’s fans. of hunger this time around. The third annual NEC The NEC’s state-of-the-art digital network debuted to rave reviews and SAAC Canned Food Drive competition resulted has since attracted a loyal following for its rich set of content, which in- in the collection of 10,886 non-perishable food cludes live regular season and NEC Championship events, on-demand items, a 46.3 percent increase from the prior year’s video, highlight packages, coaches shows, features, original program- total. Mount St. Mary’s placed first for the second ming and access to the league’s extensive digital library, all free of year in a row after donating a conference-high charge to users. The network gives fans inside access to the NEC and 2,548 items to the Emmitsburg (MD) Food Bank. its student-athletes on the field, in the classroom, across campus, and The SAAC “Money Wars” fund-raising initiative to in the community. support the Children’s Cancer Recovery Foundation By the end of year six, over 4,400 live events had been broadcast on raised an all-time high $21,721 in 2017-18. Saint Front Row with nearly 1.9 million viewers tuning in to the network. Francis U led the charge and received the Money Wars trophy by raising $5,820. The NEC’s annual All events are streamed in HD, feature a DVR-style rewind feature and donation to the CCRF has increased during every are instantly archived. one of the past six years. A companion NEC on the Run iOS mobile app provides free, one-click For the first time, Saint Francis U was the recipient access to live events and on-demand content from NEC Front Row. Fans of the NEC Building Communities award, present- can also join the conversation through the app’s social media integra- ed by Bayer. The award recognizes the institution tion. The NEC on the Run app can be downloaded on the iPhone, iPad that demonstrates the highest dedication to mak- or iPod Touch. ing an impact in the community through the efforts of its student-athletes, coaches and administrators. SFU logged 5,817 hours and conference members recorded 31,400 hours of community service over the course of the 2017-18 academic year. 2018-19 NORTHEAST CONFERENCE FAN GUIDE 5 ABOUT THE NORTHEAST CONFERENCE ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENTS Saint Francis U made history in 2017-18 by winning the program’s first-ever Brenda Weare Commissioner’s Cup. The Red Flash also won the Joan Martin Women’s Cup for the fourth time while Bryant captured the Men’s Cup for the fifth straight year. Fairleigh Dickinson bowler Karsyn Lukosius finished her storied career as a two-time NTCA All-American. Lukosius, who was named to the second team, also earned recognition as the NEC Bowler of the Year and the NEC Scholar-Athlete of the Year in her sport. It was yet another strong year for NEC women’s bowling. Remarkably, five of the NEC’s seven bowling members ranked among Amer- ica’s best in the final NTCA Top-20 poll. Perennial national power Fairleigh Dickinson finished the year ranked ninth. The Knights were joined by Sacred Heart (11th), NEC champion Saint Francis U (12th), LIU Brooklyn (15th) and Duquesne (19th). The legend of Jessica Kovatch continued to grow in 2017-18. The sharpshooting Saint Francis U junior guard was named the NEC and ECAC Player of the Year, but that’s just the start. She ranked second in the NCAA in scoring (24.4 ppg), set an NCAA single-season record with 141 made three-pointers, established a new NEC career record for triples (349), broke the NEC single-season record for points (831), set an NEC single-game record with 11 three-pointers and raised her career scoring total to 2,158 points.