Special season for Siena continues in MAAC tournament

A regular season champion in his first season as head coach, Carmen Maciariello now guides Siena into MAAC tournament as top seed. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Beaming with pride this past Friday in the wake of his team clinching the program’s first Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship of any kind in a decade, Carmen Maciariello paused several times, just to reflect upon the significance of this season, his first as the head coach at Siena.

A nine-game win streak to end the regular season, vaulting the Saints from the middle of the pack in the MAAC standings to the top spot, has positioned Siena as the favorite — on paper, at least — to deliver the first postseason championship since the same aforementioned 2009-10 season this week in Atlantic City, where the Saints’ road to the NCAA Tournament resumes in a quarterfinal meeting with Manhattan.

“They’ve always bought in and they’ve understood, from that time we lost at Manhattan on the road (January 12), we just talked about coaching them harder and me demanding more from them,” Maciariello recalled. “And they love it. They love to be coached, and I think that’s the biggest thing. I think this team has grown and shown that sense of urgency, game by game. We won those close games at Fairfield, won on the road at Quinnipiac and won a close game at Marist, so I think it’s all coming together nicely. Now we’ve got to make sure we’re taking the right steps to make that next jump.”

“I think our maturity level has definitely grown throughout the season,” Jalen Pickett added. “At the beginning of the year, we had a lot of people just transferring in, a lot of freshmen coming in. Basically, me and Manny (Camper) were the only ones who played together, so we’re trying to get that group together, get some cohesiveness, just keep going on the road and keep winning.”

Siena split its two battles with Manhattan, losing on the road at Draddy Gymnasium before prevailing on its home floor at Times Union Center five weeks later. Although the top seed in the MAAC tournament has only won it twice in the last 10 years, the man who will now prepare his own team for a rubber match with the Saints believes he is coaching against the team to beat.

“It would be a disservice if they don’t win the MAAC title,” Steve Masiello declared after his Manhattan team won its tournament opener Tuesday. “They’re playing the best basketball, so they’re the easy favorite to win this thing. Everyone can see that. This is their tournament.”

Maciariello spoke intimately about the power of belief following Siena’s January 31 win at Iona, the Saints’ first away from Albany this season. Since that day, not only has the belief grown, but so too has the team’s makeup on and off the floor, providing the rare combination of efficient basketball and unmatched intangibles that usually proves to be impenetrable in March.

“We all knew from the first time we got together last spring when I got the job,” he gushed. ”We knew what we had here, and we knew how talented we were. It was just a matter of pushing the right buttons and getting them to understand how hard they had to play, and not just rely on their talent. Those details mattered. It doesn’t happen all the time, and these guys deserve it. They went through a lot, and they all have different stories and different connections to them. For Elijah Burns to come home and be a key cog in a championship team in his hometown, and for Jalen to test the NBA waters and have all that talk to deal with, and then for Manny to be on a team two years ago that it was tough for him to see the court to now being a guy that’s an all-conference-caliber player, I’m just so proud of these guys.”

“We’re starting something. We’re building a foundation, and this is year one. It’s a credit to them for their hard work, and now we get to hang a banner in our practice facility and get to bring this back home to Albany for our great fans that have been behind us all season long and supporting us. That’s what makes Siena so special, and then me being an alum on top of that, I think these guys understand what it means to wear this jersey now. From afar, when I wasn’t here as an assistant or a coach, the jersey lost its luster, lost its value. Manny Camper was here for some of that, Jalen helped bring it back, Elijah helped bring it back, but Sammy Friday and Manny were the two who kind of went through some of that. To get this for them, it’s special, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys to do this with in my first year, to be honest with you.”