Dan Engelstad leads Mount St. Mary’s into MAAC after successful run in NEC. (Photo by USA Today Sports Images)
This summer, after Monmouth departed for the Colonial Athletic Association, MAAC commissioner Rich Ensor reached back into the NEC and brought an institution with a championship pedigree into the fold, welcoming Mount St. Mary’s as the newest MAAC member, regaining the Maryland market vacated by Loyola's 2013 departure for the Patriot League. The Mountaineers, NEC champions in 2021 and three times within the last 10 years, bring an instant gravitas and track record to the MAAC, where head coach Dan Engelstad is eager to get the ball rolling.
“It’s an exciting challenge for our program,” Engelstad proclaimed. “We’re looking forward to the challenge and the competition that it requires. It seems like it’s a league where there’s no nights off. This is my fifth season as head coach at The Mount, I’m really excited about this group and how we’ve built it, and now we get to start over and learn a new league.”
“Our guys are excited about the challenge, when we announced it to them, you could see they had an extra giddy-up in their step. It’s going to be a battle every night against some really good coaches and really good teams. It’s not too much different from what we’re used to. I think the physicality, especially from the wing spot, is an adjustment. It’s a league that gets after it defensively, and that’s how we want to play.”
Engelstad is no stranger to a jump in class, so to speak, as he returned to Emmitsburg — where he was an assistant under Milan Brown in the late 2000s — as the successor to Jamion Christian after making a name for himself at Division III Southern Vermont. While the heightened competition moving from the NEC to the MAAC is a different parallel to draw, the journey into a new conference will be mitigated by The Mount returning seven of its top nine scorers last season, each of whom averaged double-figure minutes per game.
“The good thing about a transition like this is we return a lot of high-level players and people,” Engelstad opined. “We’re not rebuilding a culture or trying to rebuild something we feel like was heading in a really good direction in the NEC. We’ll draw on the experiences we’ve had in the past, but for us, it’s just trying to get this group — this team — to play at a better level. We thought we had some chances last year to really take some big steps with our program, but there were certain things that held us back. We turned the ball over too much, we weren’t playing as hard or as disciplined defensively, and we figured it out kind of late.”
“We have a lot of the same guys, which I love, and for us, is exciting to have that core in place, but we just don’t know the league. The other thing is, it’s going to be a challenge for us, but it’s going to be a challenge for our opponents, too. They don’t know us, they’ve got to come down to Emmitsburg, and we do have one of the best mid-major environments that I’ve seen. The MAAC is going to love our environment down here.”
In its first year in the MAAC, Quinnipiac came within two wins of the NCAA Tournament, while Monmouth flirted with an at-large bid two years in a row and grabbed multiple wins over nationally-ranked high major opponents before remaining a consistent part of the league’s upper echelon. The track record for fast success out of the gate is there, but for Engelstad, his goal is simple: Compete first, and the rest will take care of itself.
“I haven’t looked at it too closely,” he admitted. “I’ve just been so consumed with our team trying to get us better and prepared for the season, but I know there’s been a past track record of having that success, and that’s what we’re looking to do. This isn’t a three, four-year plan. We’re trying to compete right away, and we think we have a group in place. Jalen Benjamin is a senior for us. Malik (Jefferson) is a fifth-year senior. These guys don’t want to have to wait for this to be a good thing for us in the MAAC. We’re going to try to compete this year, and I like our group.”
In Benjamin, Jefferson, Deandre Thomas and Dakota Leffew, the Mountaineers have an established core that will join Josh Reaves, Jaylin Gibson, and incoming transfers George Tinsley and Xavier Lipscomb in forming a deceptively strong rotation that will almost certainly catch opponents off guard, perhaps more so in the first half of the 20-game MAAC schedule.
“Malik’s been with us from day one, he’s someone that you want your program to be about,” Engelstad said of Jefferson. “He’s already graduated from Mount St. Mary’s, he has a job lined up at an accounting firm in Bethesda, Maryland. He’s been the rock to our program, and I think he’s played alongside some really talented frontcourt players. We need Malik to take it up another notch, and we think that’s why he came back for a fifth year. Jalen, for us, we’re very ball screen-dominant, and you could tell by the end of the year that he really got going and got comfortable. He’s taken a big step from a leadership standpoint, is somebody that can create his own shot, and isn’t afraid of the moment. I like the fact that he’s on our side, and you can just tell that he’s got a confidence to him, and is really playing at a high level.”
“You talk about a Deandre Thomas, he’s been in a lot of college basketball games. Last year, he had an expanded role, and we’re going to demand and need more from all these guys, like Dakota Leffew, Deandre, Xavier Lipscomb, Jaylin Gibson. These guys all know the competition, and they’ve all taken on that challenge. We’ve got to be a more physical team than we’ve been, and they’ve embraced that. Deandre can slide and play the one, two and three. We haven’t had that with teams in the past, so we’re excited to see our offense take a jump, and with the work they’ve put in during the offseason, we’ll be a more efficient and more effective offensive team. Hopefully, we can the keep the core of our defense.”
All in all, the excitement around the program and its new home has not yet dissipated, and doubling down on the positive energy, Engelstad offered enthusiasm in discussing what The Mount’s new fan base can expect from the new kid in town.
“I’m excited to see how this stacks up against the MAAC,” he reiterated. “We pride ourselves on the defensive side of the ball, we want to get up and pressure the basketball, it’s something that we stress every single day. On a made basket, we want to make you work for it, and with the talent we have, we want to get easy baskets and execute, and be a disciplined basketball team. We want to make teams be uncomfortable, and that’s something we’re looking forward to challenging ourselves with. I can’t wait to see our guys competing.”
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