A member of the Lehigh men's basketball coaching staff, which made a bunch of noise with its upset of Duke in the NCAA tournament on Friday, has ties to the Valley.
T.J. Jordan is in his second season as the Mountain Hawks' Director of Basketball Operations. He went to Lehigh after spending the 2009-10 season as an assistant coach to Frank Marcinek at Susquehanna. Jordan came to Susquehanna after one season as the head coach at Bel Air High in Maryland.
Jordan played basketball at St. Mary's (Md.), where helped lead the Seahawks to the Capital Athletic Conference title and a spot in the Division III Sweet 16 as a senior.
END OF THE ROAD: Bryan Cohen's stellar career with the Bucknell men's basketball program came to a close with Sunday's loss at Nevada, along with fellow seniors Enoch Andoh and Probese Leo.
A three-time Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year, Cohen became the first player in the history of the conference to win a major award three times. He set the Patriot League and Bucknell program records with 130 appearances in his career, starting a remarkable 127 games over that span.
Cohen, a senior from Huntingdon Valley, was one of the most versatile players in school history. He finished his career with 1,104 points, 488 rebounds, 313 assists, 137 three-pointers and 75 steals. Cohen is 25th in program history in points, eighth in assists and ninth in 3-pointers made.
NOT FAR OFF: Corey Lear went 2-2 at the NCAA Wrestling Championships, but he doesn't have to look too far to see just how close he is to the podium.
Lear, a PIAA champion at Benton, got an at-large bid to nationals at 165 pounds and went 2-2 with a first-period period fall over Michigan State's David Chezza. He ended his junior season 18-11 and heads into his senior year with 62 career wins.
One of Lear's biggest rivals over the past two seasons has been Lehigh's Brandon Hatchet. Lear beat Hatchet 1-0 in a dual meet last year, while Hatchet edged him this year, 3-1.
Hatchet, a senior, reached the NCAA title match on Saturday night, where he ran into Penn State buzzsaw David Taylor. Taylor, the Outstanding Wrestler at nationals, earned a 23-7 technical fall to win his first national title.
NEW TEAMMATE: Last May when Lewisburg and Trinity battled for relay titles a the PIAA Track & Field Championships, who would have thought that two runners from that Lewisburg team would team up with one of the Trinity runners to win gold a couple of months later in college?
At the Centennial Conference Indoors Track & Field Championships last month, Franklin & Marshall's group of Joe Strawitz, Derek Pawlush and Greg and Luk Olenginski teamed up to win to the 4x800 in 7:58.27.
The Olenginski twins were part of the Lewisburg relays that won the 4x800 over Trinity, but finished second to the same Trinity group in the 4x400. Pawlush ran the second leg for Trinity on both of those relays.
SHUTDOWN DEFENSE: For the second week in a row, Susquehanna junior women's lacrosse goalkeeper Emily Stankaitis was named the Landmark Conference Defensive Player of the Week.
Stankaitis's efforts in goal helped propel the unbeaten Crusaders to a 2-0 week with wins over Marymount (Va.) and at Alvernia. Against Marymount, she recorded seven saves in SU's 20-6 win and racked up 18 more saves in a 19-11 Susquehanna win against Alvernia.
