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By Robert Rosen
Hometown Weekly Staff
When the Holy Cross men’s basketball team entered the Patriot League Tournament, few thought they stood a chance to win game, let alone advance far enough to make it to the finals.
After all, the Crusaders experienced a down year this season, but if no one believed in them that certainly didn’t stop them from believing in themselves.
So when the final buzzer sounded in the Patriot League Tournament final against Lehigh on Wednesday, March 9, Wellesley resident Pat Benzan and his teammates had secured a 59-56 victory and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
A 5-foot-11 freshman point guard, Benzan plays about five minutes per game for the Crusaders (14-19), who faced off against Southern University (22-12) in a battle of 16 seeds in a play-in game last night.
Benzan played his high school ball at Roxbury Latin, where he is the all-time leading scorer with 1,886 points and also has the most assists in school history with 501. He also did a postgraduate year at Worcester Academy before arriving at Holy Cross, where he has displayed good defensive skills and court vision, according to a scouting report.
Benzan’s sister, Katie, is also a standout basketball player, having just been named the Gatorade Massachusetts Player of the Year as a senior point guard for Noble & Greenough. She will be playing for Harvard next year.
Robert Rosen is an Editor for Hometown Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @roberterosen.
