With the winter session over and the spring semester starting back up, it has come down to the final stretch of games for Baruch’s winter sports teams before the Bearcats’ spring teams start their seasons.
Only six games remain for Baruch’s men’s basketball team. Their overall record sits at 15-4 with a 9-1 CUNYAC record, putting them in first place in the CUNYAC standings. Their final games are all equally important, as they are all conference games. In order to keep their No. 1, seeding they will most likely have to win out.
Over the winter break, the Bearcats saw two of their current seniors and their team captains eclipse the coveted 1,000-point mark — William Sixsmith and Bryler Paige. Paige, the redshirt senior, is Baruch’s second leading scorer. ith 13.5 points per game, has been one of their more consistent players on both sides off the ball for his entire career as a Bearcat. He has come up clutch in moments for his team, as at Battle of Lexington in 2017, he hit the game-tying 3-pointer at the end of regulation to force overtime.
Sixsmith, more commonly known as “Billy,” is known for his clutch 3-point shooting, and is Baruch’s all-time leader with 256 and counting, a record he broke earlier this season. He is the third-leading scorer on the team with just over 13 points per game and is shooting just under 40 percent from behind the arc.
As the playoffs are in the near future, there is the one game that is highly anticipated each year by not only the Baruch basketball team but the entire campus — the “Battle of Lexington.” It will take place on Thursday, Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. against CUNYAC rival Hunter College. This game is a way for the athletic department to reach out to the remaining student body of Baruch and be a fun and competitive way to bring the school closer.
Baruch’s swimming and diving teams had their regular seasons come to an end this past week. Both the men and women are set up to be in top spots for the CUNYAC Finals. The men finished their season with an overall record of 8-0 and a CUNYAC record of 4-0 to put them in the top seed in the standings. The women had a 9-3 record and a 5-1 CUNYAC record to give them the second seed behind Hunter College.
Both teams had great seasons with many standout moments, but the day that stood out the most was at the Mount Saint Mary College Invitational, specifically the teams’ races against Mount Saint Mary, where the Bearcats’ men’s and women’s teams combined for five broken records.
Women’s captain Yee Chung Phang broke two records on the day. First, she broke a 13-year-old 100 individual medley record held by Annelie Gregor with a time of 1:06.14. The other was another held by Gregor in the 50-yard breaststroke, by putting up the time of 33.49. Alan Li, of the men’s team, also broke two records on the day. He broke two 16-year-old record held by Emrah Ertamay, one in the 100 individual medley and the other in the 50-yard breaststroke. The fifth record broken was held also by Ertamay but broken by Evan Nikolic in the 50-yard butterfly with a time of 26.65.