Ellis Cooper was named the East Regional MVP last season

RINDGE, N.H. (March 9, 2014) – The Franklin Pierce University men’s basketball team received an at-large bid to the 2014 NCAA Division II Tournament East Regional on Sunday night, as the Ravens were tabbed as the fourth seed for next weekend’s event.

The Ravens will take on fifth-seeded Philadelphia University in the first round on Saturday in the Moore Fieldhouse on the campus of Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Conn. Southern Connecticut will serve as the host-school for the regional after it was granted the No. 1 seed following its Northeast-10 Conference Championship win on Saturday afternoon.

Franklin Pierce enters the regional with a 20-7 overall record after reaching the quarterfinals of the NE-10 championship last week. Philadelphia comes into the national tournament with a 25-6 record following a 42-41 win over Holy Family on Saturday to claim the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC) Championship and the league’s automatic bid to the regional.

The Ravens and Rams will be meeting in the NCAA Tournament for the second time in the last three seasons. The teams last met in the regional back in 2012 in the first round, as top-seeded Franklin Pierce pulled out a narrow 59-58 win over eighth-seeded Philadelphia. Former Ravens star Eric Jean-Guillaume flipped in the game-winning layup with :42 remaining to send Franklin Pierce to the second round.

The winner of Saturday’s first round affair will advance to the second round on Sunday, and face the winner of top-seeded SCSU and eighth-seeded Bridgeport out of the ECC. Franklin Pierce faced Southern Connecticut earlier this season with the Owls pulling out a 106-95 triumph over the Ravens back on Jan. 25 in Rindge. Franklin Pierce and Bridgeport met in last season’s East Regional Championship with the Ravens earning a hard-fought 57-52 decision to advance to the Division II Elite Eight in Louisville, Ky.

Franklin Pierce will be led into the NCAAs this season by a trio of standouts who earned all-conference recognition from the NE-10 two weeks ago, including senior forward Ellis Cooper (Northampton, Mass.). Cooper has averaged 18.2 points and 8.1 rebounds per game this season, and has shown a knack for coming up huge for the Ravens during each of the last two NCAA Tournaments. He was named the regional’s most valuable player last season after averaging 15.3 points per game in the three victories to reach the national quarterfinals. He was named to the All-NE-10 First-Team two weeks ago, marking the second time in the last three years he was honored on the league’s top team.

Junior forward Ryen Vilmont (Philadelphia, Pa.), who was named to the All-NE-10 Second-Team two weeks ago, will enter this year’s regional with a 16.0 points per game average. He, too, was recognized at last year’s regional, as he was placed on the all-regional team after going for 18 points (15 in the second half) to help spark the Ravens to the championship victory over Bridgeport.

The other Raven to earn all-conference accolades this season was freshman guard Donte Gittens (Hartford, Conn.), who was placed on the NE-10 All-Rookie Team. His foray into this year’s regional will mark his first taste of NCAA Tournament competition.

For more information on Franklin Pierce men’s basketball, please visit the team’s page at http://athletics.franklinpierce.edu. To follow the program even further, please visit Franklin Pierce Athletics on YouTube (www.youtube.com/FranklinPierceSports), Twitter (www.twitter.com/FPUathletics) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/FranklinPierceRavens). Fans wishing to purchase Franklin Pierce men’s basketball apparel can do so on the athletic department’s online store at http://athletics.franklinpierce.edu/store(.)