Bryant still a work in progress despite 2-6 start

Bryant's 2-6 record has masked potential for Bulldogs, but Jared Grasso insists his team is improving and will be better off later in season. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEW YORK -- With just two wins in its first eight games, the upside for Bryant University may still be downplayed by most, and understandably so as the Bulldogs continue to chart a course going into Northeast Conference play. Still, the relative lack of attention is a disservice for a program that -- even in the face of losses that appear decisive in the final statistics -- continues to improve, even if the progress is more incremental than sudden.

"We've got a long way to go obviously, but we're a work in progress," head coach Jared Grasso reiterated after a 90-68 loss to Columbia Friday night, one in which Bryant fought back from a 13-point first-half deficit and briefly surged ahead following the intermission before a lack of consistent shooting and Columbia's defense ultimately turned the game on its head. "We're playing without a point guard right now, so we're kind of point guard by committee, and we're still trying to figure ourselves out."

"Part of the process for this group is learning how to win. They only won three games last year, and sometimes they get hit and don't respond the right way. It's my job to figure that out, and we'll get back to work and try to get it right."

As the Bulldogs prepare for the impending NEC battles, they do so without Ikenna Ndugba, who will be out until January following shoulder surgery that has left Bryant relying on Adam Grant and Byron Hawkins to carry the load while younger players the likes of freshman Joe Kasperzyk see integral minutes while the culture their first-year coach has instilled continues to permeate the inner walls of the program.

"It's a daily fight to try to make our guys understand how hard it is to win," said Grasso. "We're a much better home team than we are a road team right now, and again, we're going to try to keep getting better. We know it's a process, we know we have a lot of work to do. We're going to play our style. I'm implementing a style and system, and there's times that there's going to be bumps in the road because of it, but I know how I want to play. Moving forward, we're going to continue to recruit guys who fit that system."

Sometimes, a slow start can deter expectations and cause a feeling of apathy among players, coaches, and fans, yet Grasso remains the eternal optimist he has spent his whole career being, as he was quick to point out that the Iona teams on which he served as Tim Cluess' lead assistant did not always get out of the gate to a torrid pace, but succeeded when it mattered most.

"We have to improve on a lot of things, but they want to win and they care," Grasso said. "And because of that, I know we're going to improve. We're going to keep getting better, and for us, our season starts January 2. This is us just trying to get better and find ourselves for the next three weeks until you get to NEC play, because the reality is at this level, it's about those two months. And even if it's not the first two weeks in January, we need to be playing our best basketball going into the end of the season."

"I've been around teams who struggled early, I've been around teams that started 1-5, 2-6, tough non-league schedule, struggled on the road, and we found ourselves in January and February, and we were cutting down nets in March. This challenge doesn't scare me at all, and I've told our guys that. This isn't something that I'm afraid of, this isn't something we're going to back down from. We're going to embrace it, we're going to figure it out, we're going to get better and we're going to play our best basketball when we need to."