Teaneck's Joel Hernandez leads LIU-Brooklyn to NCAA Tournament

What could have been Joel Hernandez's final college basketball game turned out to be his best game.

Scoring a career-high 32 points, the fifth-year senior from Teaneck led LIU-Brooklyn to a 71-61 victory at Wagner, earning the Blackbirds the Northeast Conference Tournament title and a trip to the NCAA Tournament.

"This is a dream come true," he said in a postgame interview with ESPN2.

A dream ending to a season that started with many questions.

Hernandez played only part of one game last season because of a dislocated thumb, and the LIU program went through a chaotic period when coach Jack Perri, despite a 20-win season, was fired after the 2016-17 season, and the Blackbirds had no coach for a month until former UMass player and coach Derek Kellogg was hired.

A late-season surge that began with a win at FDU, convinced LIU it was a contender for the NEC title. Hernandez, a 6-foot-3 shooting guard, averaged 27.1 points in three conference tournament games. His regular-season average of 20.9 was second in the conference.

The Blackbirds had won three NCAA invites before Hernandez stepped on campus in 2013, after also considering Hofstra, Robert Morris, Quinnipiac and St. Joseph's following his career at Teaneck in which the Highwaymen won three Bergen Jamborees.

The game at Wagner would decide if Hernandez would make it to the Big Dance in his career.

"I wanted to make sure I played my hardest and I left everything on the floor," he told the Brooklyn Eagle. "Even if we lost, I didn't want to have any regrets after the game."

His determination was on display in the first half, when he outscored the entire Wagner team, 19-18. The Seahawks, who had been 16-0 at home, never recovered. In 38 minutes, Hernandez, the MVP of the tournament, made 10 of 16 shots, grabbed seven rebounds and had two blocks and three steals.

"I thought he put us on his back in the first half," Kellogg said. "I told him all along, that's what a fifth-year senior is supposed to do if he wants to elongate his career and give himself an opportunity to play at the highest level in the NCAA Tournament.

LIU-Brooklyn (18-16) is getting an opportunity (the Blackbirds play Radford on Tuesday night in Dayton, Ohio), in large part due to Hernandez's play. His legacy is intact.

Here’s how other North Jersey athletes are faring in college:

Montclair State's bid to reach the Division III women' basketball Final Four was denied by reigining national champion Amherst, 51-40. Montlcair State finished 25-4. Amherst is 31-0 and has won 64 games in a row.

Terrell Spaulding of Felician, a redshirt junior from Paterson Eastside, was selected to the all-Central Athletic Collegiate Conference first team. The former Bergen CC guard-forward led the conference in scoring (20.8).

Marc Rienas, a sophomore from Old Tappan, won the 1,000-meter run and anchored Northeastern's winning 4-x-800 relay team at the 1C4A Championships. He had a personal-best time of 2:24 in the 1,000.

Kyle Cochran, a freshman from Paramus, completed his first wrestling season at Maryland with a 12-9 record at 157 pounds... Joe Oliva, a senior from Ridgewood, had a 13-5 record at 149 pounds in his final season at Penn.

Zack Chakonis of Northwestern, a redshirt sophomore from Washington Township, finished eighth at 197 pounds at the Big Ten championships. The former Don Bosco standout had a 15-14 record, including a 5-2 mark against conference opponents.

Ben Brisman won the 141-pound Division III National Championship for Ithaca College on Saturday night. Brisman was the No. 7 seed of the tournament and only started wrestling in ninth grade at Pascack Hills. Brisman had lost to his opponent in the national finals two times throughout the course of the year, including last week in the Conference finals before avenging the loss with a 10-7 victory over Brett Kaliner of Stevens Tech.