GAME NOTES: After a bye through the first round of the event, the Canisius Golden Griffins and the Monmouth Hawks hook up in the quarterfinals of the 34th annual Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament at the Times Union Center on Saturday afternoon.

The fourth-seeded Hawks, who were only recently added to the MAAC roster, along with Quinnipiac, have yet to win a game in this event (0-2). The program was rather sporadic during the first half of the 2014-15 campaign, but managed to straighten out down the stretch, at one point winning four in a row. The Hawks closed the regular season last Sunday with a 63-57 win over Siena at home.

Meanwhile, the fifth-seeded Golden Griffins stumbled into the month of February with four straight defeats and five losses over the course of six games tracing back to late January. However, the program also closed strong with five wins in six tries, the last triumph being a 72-65 final over Fairfield a little more than a week ago.

Monmouth owns a 3-1 advantage in the all-time series between the squads, the Hawks winning three straight over Canisius since the Griffs posted an 87-67 blowout on Jan. 12, 2014. The three wins for Monmouth have come by a combined 10 points.

The survivor of this outing will take on the winner of the Siena/Iona contest in the semifinals on Sunday afternoon, for the right to play for the championship on Monday night.

The Golden Griffs, who have a record of 23-24 in this event but just a single title stemming from a 52-46 victory against Fairfield almost two decades ago, were a streaky team during the regular season, but at least closed out with four wins in the last five outings. The issue with Canisius is that it will be missing second-leading scorer Phil Valenti (10.6 ppg) due to an ankle injury. That leaves Zach Lewis (12.9 ppg) and Josiah Heath (9.5 ppg) as the top options on offense for a program scoring only 64.6 ppg.

When it comes to defense against the rest of the MAAC, Canisius has held those foes to just 63.1 ppg, thanks in part to the efforts of Heath and Kevin Bleeker who both have 20 blocked shots to their credit in those 20 outings.

The Hawks, who won both regular-season meetings against the Golden Griffins, held foes to only 39.6 percent success from the field, which allowed Justin Robinson (13.4 ppg) and Deon Jones (12.7 ppg) to take care of business at the offensive end of the court. Robinson, who also led the program in assists with 117 and steals with 52, was first on the unit with 49 3-pointers. However, compared to the rest of the competition this season, Monmouth was rather reserved when attacking from the perimeter, connecting on only about five triples per contest.

Again, the offense for the Hawks hinges on how much Robinson and Jones get involved in the action, seeing as how they combined to make 232 of the unit's 482 shots at the free-throw line.

Still new to the scene in the MAAC, this would be a great time for the Hawks to get over the hump and grab that first conference tournament win since Canisius is down one crucial player due to injury.