Crawford’s parting shot could lead to Gaels’ fifth straight MAAC crown

E.J. Crawford shoots to become just second player to win four straight MAAC tournaments, and also keep Iona’s March dominance alive this week. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

There are very few guarantees in today’s world. 

Iona representing the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference in the NCAA Tournament, for the majority of the last decade at least, has seemed like one of those can’t-miss occurrences.

Yes, the Gaels have won the last four MAAC tournaments, and have heard their names announced on Selection Sunday six times in the last eight years. But the maroon-and-gold dominance that has come to be recognized as a rite of passage from winter to spring will be put to the ultimate test this week, when Iona — seeded seventh in this year's conference playoff — must win four games in five days to keep the streak alive, beginning Tuesday against Canisius.

“We’d rather play three than four, but the situation we’re in is what we’re in,” acting head coach Tra Arnold said as he continues to fill in for Tim Cluess this week in Atlantic City. “We'll just try it one game at a time, and Tuesday night’s our first.”

Iona appeared to have hit its best stride two weeks ago, finally returning to the top half of the conference standings before three straight losses relegated the Gaels to a sub-.500 league record for the first time since the 2008-09 season, when current Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard was in his second campaign in New Rochelle. Nonetheless, an experienced core led by senior E.J. Crawford has done its best to quiet the skepticism and navigate the adversity that has seemed to penetrate the program more than usual this year.

“He’s really tried to take a leadership role when he’s not had to the last few years,” Arnold said of Crawford, who comes into the final MAAC tournament of his college career looking to not only preserve his unblemished record, but also join teammate and close friend Rickey McGill as the only players in conference history to go 4-for-4 in cutting down nets in March. “You can see he’s been growing into that role as the season’s gone along, and he’s done a really good job with that.”

“I came in as a freshman and all I wanted to do was shoot, nothing else,” Crawford recalled last summer, highlighting his offseason conditioning program and the all-around development in his game before beginning his senior season. “Coach Cluess got that out of me quick. We had an end-of-the-year meeting and he said, ‘If you want to be a player after college, you’ve got to rebound more and add more to your game.’ And since that talk, I’ve got a post-up game, I’m doing pretty much almost everything.”

Crawford leads the MAAC in scoring, averaging just under 19 points per game, and his 5.3 rebounds per contest are a career-high total in that category. The swingman who announced himself to the world by draining the game-winning shot as a freshman in Iona’s 2017 MAAC championship victory will already go down as one of the more decorated conference players in conference history, yet his career will be incomplete by his own admission should the Gaels not be the last men standing at Boardwalk Hall Saturday afternoon.

“We don’t want to be the Iona team that messes it up,” he told the New York Post Monday. “We came here for one thing. Anything else is a bust in our eyes. That’s how we feel.”