<\/p>\n
The celebration of the Gannon men\u2019s basketball team continued Tuesday as fans and community leaders welcomed back the Division II national champions from Indianapolis.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing\u2019s better than just watching them celebrate,\u201d said Gannon head coach Easton Bazzoli. \u201cEven watching them right now walk around and having all these people shake their hands\u2014that\u2019s my favorite part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hundreds of Gannon fans packed the Highmark Events Center as the team received an escort from the City of Erie Police and Fire departments back into Erie.<\/p>\n
Fans watched as a video recapped the title game performance before the team walked in with the championship trophy.<\/p>\n
For longtime fans like Chuck Pora, who has been a statistician for the school since 1969, this was the thrill of a lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the thrill of a lifetime,\u201d said Pora. \u201cLike coach said, it\u2019s surreal. I didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d ever live long enough to see something like this happen, but it did. This is one of the greatest thrills of my life. I\u2019ve loved Gannon basketball all my life, and here it is\u2014my life is complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gannon officials, along with City of Erie Mayor Daira Devlin, Erie County Executive Christian Vogel, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, all congratulated and honored the new Division II champions.<\/p>\n
Former players like Mel Witherspoon shared in the celebration. A 1968 graduate who played two seasons for the Golden Knights, he left reveling in the historic moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the team came in and I watched the video\u2014chills. I just got chills,\u201d said Witherspoon.<\/p>\n
The players, seated in chairs at center court with the trophy placed on a table just behind them, were still, days later, struggling to put the accomplishment into perspective.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s super cool,\u201d said junior guard Mackenzie Morgan. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s fully set in yet. I\u2019m still in a bit of disbelief.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the celebration concluded, fans had the opportunity to pose with the championship trophy and share their admiration with the team, with players expressing how proud they were to represent the city on the national stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m starting to really understand what it means\u2014what it means to this community,\u201d said Pace Prosser, the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament. \u201cI\u2019m just happy to do it for a place that really cares about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The celebration of the Gannon men\u2019s basketball team continued Tuesday as fans and community leaders welcomed back the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[5956,2359,72090,136,138,137,9677,72091],"class_list":{"0":"post-161627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-celebration","10":"tag-division-ii","11":"tag-erie","12":"tag-erie-headlines","13":"tag-erie-news","14":"tag-gannon-university","15":"tag-national-champions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}