I’m not sure if the video adequately captures the excitement in the MAC when Andrew Nicholas sunk that 3 pointer to seal the deal for Monmouth. The place was electric. I’ve never seen the type of sheer excitement in the MAC as I saw after the game today. Even Monmouth Head Coach King Rice was jumping up and down, hugging Assistant Coach Rick Callahan the entire time. It was a great, well-deserved “feel good moment” for Monmouth.

There were a lot of players that came together with good performances to help push Monmouth ahead. You can read more about those performances in Josh Newman’s writeup over on the Asbury Park Press’ The Hawks Nest blog.

Second, Sophomore Andrew Nicholas had a career night with 28 points. It was really something great to watch. In fact, he was named the Northeast Conference’s Co-Player of the Week for his effort.

This is a Monmouth team that has a lot of fan support and a lot of fan investment in the team. One of the primary reasons for the renewed support isn’t just the dedicated players on the court, but the great coaching changes that were made before the beginning of last year’s season. The biggest of those changes was bringing in Head Coach King Rice to help rebuild the program from the bottom up. Rice is an enthusiastic coach and seems to have a very positive, strong connection with his team’s leaders. Here are some of his post-game comments followed by some comments by Nicholas on his career game:

I don’t have much more commentary on the game because you can find much more information at the links below. However, I have a few pictures from the game that I figured I’d post here in case anyone was interested in taking a look. The Asbury Park Press reports that there were some 2,307 fans in attendance last Friday night and it certainly looked like it (and sounded like it). Here’s hoping that the excitement and attendance continues to grow at the MAC.

Normally, I wouldn’t make the full-size images available for viewing (I usually cut these things down in size so that they are easier on my server). However, since I only have six pictures to post, I left the high resolution images available for you to look at if you want. Enjoy!

Read more about the Hawks’ home opening win on Tony Graham’s blog and the Monmouth Athletics website.

I hope that you enjoy flipping through some of these pictures – I know that I enjoyed attending the Hawks’ games last season and I’m hoping for a better season next year. It’s a shame that a talented guy like Austin Tillotson decided to leave the team and the university, but if the kid didn’t feel comfortable in the program and wanted to go to a good academic school, then he has to make the right decision for him. And for Tillotson, that decision was to go to Colgate. If those are his reasons for leaving, I don’t think you can really blame him for making the move. Colgate is a nationally-ranked academic school while Monmouth has a modest ranking at a regional level. Colgate has about half of the enrollment that Monmouth has, so it seems to fit what the kid was looking for in his college experience.

Good for him – I wish him luck. And now, enjoy the pictures!