Tommy Eastman is pictured here on the night he set the HF-L boys basketball school record for most points in a single game with 49 against Monroe on December 28, 2015. Photo by Donna MacKenzie
Despite not playing in a month and 10 days, the Brandeis University men’s basketball team picked up a 62-47 University Athletic Association win at the University of Chicago on Saturday, January 22
Graduate student Tommy Eastman, a 2016 graduate of Honeoye Falls-Lima High, led the way with a game-high 20 points, including the 1,000th of his career.
Eastman was the star of the game for the Judges. After scoring a team-high 10 points in the first half, he reached his milestone with a 3-pointer with 16:39 left in the game. He finished the contest shooting 9-for-13 from the field, 1-for-2 from beyond the arc and 1-for-2 from the free-throw line. Eastman also finished second on the team with six rebounds. Eastman reached the 1,000-point plateau at three different schools, scoring 553 at SUNY Geneseo as a freshman and sophomore. He tallied 367 points at Middlebury College in 2019-20 as a senior, and is now at 95 points at Brandeis, giving him 1,015 overall.
Eastman is a graduate student going for an M.S. in Computer Science.
The 6-foot-4 forward is averaging 15.8 points a game for the Judges this season with a 47.1 field goal percentage and shooting 50% from behind the 3-point arc. He is shooting 73.1 percent at the free throw line and is also averaging 7.5 rebounds a game.
At Middlebury, he earned Second-Team All-UAA honors as a senior.
Eastman was a star forward at HF-L, playing on the varsity for four seasons and was a starter the final three seasons for the Cougars. He set several records in his senior season with 537 points in a season (24.4 a game), a single game record of 49 points and was the first 1,000 point scorer in HF-L boys basketball history, ending his career with 1,088 points. He led HF-L to the #1 seed in the Section V Class A2 Tournament in his senior season which ended with a 63-60 setback in the semifinals. That season, he led the team in rebounds (204), in 3-pointers (45), free throw percentage (75%) and in blocks (35) and was second on the team in steals (39) and third in assists with 52. He was named Monroe County Division 2 Player of the Year, an All-Greater Rochester 1st team member and an New York State Class A ninth team member.
In the game against Chicago, the Judges (8-3 overall) got 11 points from Toby Harris, who shot 5-for-10 from the field with a 3-pointer. Senior Chandler Jones added nine points and game-highs of four assists and seven rebounds off the bench. The Judges had a 35-28 advantage on the boards. The first half of the contest featured four ties and five lead changes. The Maroons led by as many as eight points when Hopkins hit a jumper with 13:45 to make it 14-6. Brandeis trailed 22-17 on a Munson bucket with 8:02 to go in the first half, but the Judges closed the stanza on a 14-6 run to take a 31-28 lead into halftime. Eastman had six points and Jones added four in the closing run. Brandeis opened the second half on a 12-4 run over the first four minutes, with Jones, Eastman and Harris all contributing 3-pointers as the Judges pushed their lead to double digits and never looked back.
