Siena returns core, welcomes several key newcomers for regular season title defense

Jalen Pickett enters junior season leading Siena into MAAC favorite role as Saints seek to retain momentum of last year. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Many schools were slighted by the abrupt end to last year’s college basketball season, but perhaps none more than Siena College.

The Saints had turned the corner at the most opportune of times following a February 2 loss at Saint Peter’s, winning each of their last ten contests to surge into the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament as the league’s regular season champion and top seed, distinctions that carried with them no worse than an automatic bid to the National Invitation Tournament. Then, sooner than the screech of a referee’s whistle, the remainder of the season was canceled as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the world over six months ago.

“We try not to ever dwell on any of the negative stuff,” head coach Carmen Maciariello recalled. “It’s always about this group starting the foundation, a credit to Elijah Burns, Matt Hein, Sammy Friday, Ben Diamond and our manager, Danny Cohen. There was no hanging our heads, we just kind of rolled with the punches. It is what it is. We were playing the best basketball we had all year, and that was the sad part. But I’m just proud of the guys for believing in each other and being able to take those steps.”

“It wasn’t easy. I think we were 10-10 at one point and won ten straight, but they have a chance to leave their legacy by hanging that banner and winning a regular season title. We didn’t even worry about the conference tournament championship — that’s a nice honor, but we didn’t even count it as a win, per se. The regular season title was a full body of work and we’re proud of it, and now it’s basically back to the drawing board.”

While Burns and Donald Carey, two of Siena’s four double-digit scorers last season, have departed, the Saints still return five core players from last year’s resurgence. Reigning MAAC Player of the Year Jalen Pickett is now a junior and Manny Camper, a first team all-conference selection like his teammate, returned to the Capital Region for his senior campaign after testing the NBA Draft waters. In addition, sophomores Gary Harris, Jordan King and Kyle Young will see increased opportunities to make a mark after impressive debuts as freshmen in the rotation a year ago, similar to how Camper blossomed from a role player into a legitimate superstar.

“When we talk about him declaring, it’s disappointing that with everything that’s going on, he couldn’t get any workouts, but the feedback from coaches that we received is great,” Maciariello said of Camper. “It’s good for him to be noticed, because I felt like he was an unsung hero, kind of a best-kept secret if you want to coin it that way. He always came to work, even when he struggled, and his character, his leadership, and his ability to lead by example — not just the spoken word — is terrific. He’s still growing in that regard.”

Of the aforementioned second-year trio, Maciariello gushed over the potential of each player, but reiterated the importance of each realizing their roles are going to evolve.

“The biggest thing is those guys have to understand now it’s the next step,” he described with regard to the maturation of Harris, King and Young. “It’s not okay to let your emotions take over in regards to Kyle. He’s a guy that has a chance to be an impact player in this league if he continues to work as hard as he did. His body looks great, he’s lost some weight, and now it’s about him understanding and keeping his emotions in check. Gary needs to be more than a guy who can get out in transition and run, and I think he’s a guy that can pit it on the floor a couple bounces and gives us a vertical threat, and then Jordan King — if we get the ball in his hands more as a secondary ball handler — that’s that next step for him. We love his ability to make open shots and stretch the floor. I’m looking for all three of the guys to make a jump in production. That’s what’s it’s about.”

Rhode Island transfer Dana Tate and freshman Aidan Carpenter, who assisted the scout team last season in their early enrollment, lead a supporting cast that includes graduate transfer Nick Hopkins, as well as freshmen Colin Golson and Bennett Kwiecinski, with a waiver for graduate transfer Harrison Curry still pending. Altogether, Maciariello has enjoyed his balancing act of keeping players hungry and maintaining interchangeable parts heading into the second season of a promising era of Siena basketball, one that has already seen a sturdy foundation laid upon its facade.

“Hopefully nothing changes,” Maciariello opined. “We still want to be a scrappy team that can get out and score in transition, but also grind out baskets in the half court, and we also want to play with unbelievable connection and passion for one another. We want to enjoy representing Siena College to the best of our ability. It’s a special place.”

Coaches 4 Change helping college basketball promote awareness to racial inequality

Siena’s Carmen Maciariello started Coaches 4 Change this summer with aim to increase awareness to racial inequality and social injustice. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Regardless of which side of the aisle one’s political ideologies lean toward, the overwhelming consensus among the majority of the United States over the past three months is that the systemic issues surrounding inherent racism and social injustice need to be addressed, if not remedied. And across the college basketball landscape, the call to action for players and coaches to use their respective platforms to initiate a heightened awareness to the actions that transcend the hardwood has never been more profound or heard more loudly than it has this year in the wake of the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, among the far too many victims of senseless violence.

Siena head coach Carmen Maciariello was one of the first to use his standing to call attention to these tragedies, and started Coaches 4 Change — an organization dedicated to promoting the need to overcome the systemic racism prevalent across the country — shortly after Floyd died in police custody in late May.

“Obviously, everyone was horrified by the murder of George Floyd,” Maciariello said when describing the birth of Coaches 4 Change and its goals. “I reached out to a couple of friends in the business, and there were so many Zoom calls going on during the pandemic. I had spoken to a bunch of different coaches about what it was like to be a first-time head coach, so I got to build some relationships with some different people and I started reaching out to friends in the business, asking them, ‘Hey, how are you handling this? What are you guys doing? Obviously, this isn’t right, we need to do something.’”

“It started as just a Zoom call with about 20 of us, and then it just started to grow organically. Coaches 4 Change basically stands for helping educate our student-athletes and our coaches in college basketball, and in our universities, on systemic racism, social injustices, and the power of voting. We’ve had initiatives to get all of our basketball teams registered to vote and bring that to our athletic departments to get all of our student-athletes, and then bring that to our campuses to get all our campuses registered to vote.”

Coaches 4 Change carries a four-word mission statement: Engage. Educate. Empower. Evolve. But the organization, which now counts nearly 40 coaches nationwide among its ambassadors, seeks to do much more, and interact at all levels.

“We use it as a chance to also have conversations about different things you’re doing with your team and how you’re handling this,” Maciariello revealed. “There’s a mental health piece to the pandemic and more awareness to racism and social injustices, so how are we helping our young men and women that now have these wounds reopened from things that they may have gone through as a younger adult?”

“We just wanted to make sure we were doing everything possible we could to support one another. We have women’s basketball coaches, we have strength coaches, we have men’s coaches, head coaches, assistant coaches, support staff, graduate assistants. It’s a free organization, and it’s just basically about helping educate everyone and getting everyone on the same page to realize that it needs to be done with as much energy and vigor as we try to game plan to beat an opponent.”

Click here for more information on Coaches 4 Change, including how to donate and become a member.

Dunne ready to continue upward trek in third year at Marist

 

John Dunne began rebuilding with Marist last season, and now has pieces in place to move Red Foxes closer to contention in MAAC. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

When it comes to rebuilding programs from the ground up, very few coaches are as skilled at extracting pearls from the proverbial oyster as John Dunne.

What the affable 50-year-old coach did for a dozen years at Saint Peter’s bordered on miraculous, continually finding ways to keep the Peacocks relevant despite the least resources of any school in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. It was this resume that allowed Dunne to seek, and receive, a well-deserved step up at fellow MAAC program Marist, where he enters his third year in the Hudson Valley continuing his grinding work of building a winner.

The Red Foxes enjoyed a respectable year in Dunne’s first season at the helm, but the graduation of Brian Parker and several other seniors left one of the youngest teams in the nation last year, yet Marist remained close in a majority of its games, an encouraging sign from the man in charge of a return to heights not seen in Poughkeepsie in well over a decade.

“For us, it was a grinding, tough year,” Dunne reflected of Marist’s campaign, which was ended by a close loss to Niagara in the opening round of the MAAC tournament two days before COVID-19 claimed the remainder of the college basketball season in its tidal wave of destruction, one that has also deprived the Red Foxes of the chance to get back inside McCann Arena for individual and team workouts. “On a positive level, and I mean this wholeheartedly, we never wavered in our preparation to win, regardless of how difficult the season was moving along. The losses were piling up, but our mental toughness and preparation never wavered, and I think that bodes well for the future.”

“Last year, going in, we had no experience, and that made it difficult. We had a lot of winnable games in the non-conference — and we were leading in a lot of them going into the last few minutes — and we didn’t close them out. I think we’ll be better in that regard moving forward. But make no mistake, if we’re going to have success this year, our experience and our inexperience is certainly going to have to merge in a positive way for us to be successful.”

MAAC all-rookie selection Tyler Sagl transferred recently to be closer to his Toronto home, but the Red Foxes still have breakout potential behind two-way guard Michael Cubbage, sharpshooter Matt Herasme, forwards Jordan Jones and Braden Bell, as well as 6-foot-7 Victor Enoh, who sat out last season after transferring from Memphis.

“He’s going to have an ability to block shots,” Dunne said of Enoh, citing his athleticism and size as beneficial attributes to the Marist front line. “We were not a good offensive rebounding team last year. We need to pick up in that area, and our expectation for him is to give us toughness, give us rebounding, and finish around the rim when guards are feeding him. We’re not asking too much from him in creativity. We just need him to finish, rebound and be a presence on the defensive end.”

The pieces are in place and the potential is there going into a pivotal season, and Dunne, not one to take shortcuts in crafting a competitor, has reason to believe he will see a marked improvement from this group.

“We’ll maintain our defensive intensity and attention to detail,” he said. “But you can’t win without being efficient on offense, and we’ll be more efficient. Yeah, we’ll be inexperienced to start the year, and we understand that, but we’re certainly going to have an improved product on the court.”

Dunleavy hopeful Quinnipiac’s continuity can translate to upward mobility

Baker Dunleavy goes into fourth year at Quinnipiac having to replace Rich Kelly and Kevin Marfo, but with experience to contend in MAAC’s upper echelon. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Not often does a program needing to replace both of its leading scorers project itself to not lose much of a step the following season, but by the same token, not every program possesses a cadre of well-rounded experience at every position to mitigate such significant departures.

Such is life at Quinnipiac, where despite the graduate transfers of Rich Kelly and Kevin Marfo, head coach Baker Dunleavy is in high spirits as he enters his fourth season at the helm of the Bobcats, a team who had a first-round bye in last year’s Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, but was unable to take the floor before the remainder of the season was canceled on the evening of March 12 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was such a unique situation in terms of timing, because the NBA had their situation with Rudy Gobert Wednesday night,” Dunleavy said of the confluence of events that ultimately sacrificed March Madness just as it was heating up. “We were just kind of sitting on pins and needles watching other teams and leagues make decisions knowing we were the game at night. I think we all had a feeling it was going to get canceled, but we were all just kind of hoping, somehow, we’d be able to do it.”

“For us, we had a guy like Aaron Falzon, who came and helped our program so much in one year, and really wanted to be a part of a postseason run. We just felt awful for him and all the seniors across the NCAA who didn’t get to have a sense of closure.”

Falzon, along with Kelly and Marfo — who decided to spend their final years of eligibility at Boston College and Texas A&M, respectively — are no longer in Hamden, but with that said, the cupboard remains very well stocked for a roster whose reliance on senior wing Jacob Rigoni and junior combo guard Tyrese Williams becomes heavier, but smoother with the return of one of the MAAC’s deepest and most versatile supporting casts.

“When we came here and took this program over three years ago, the first full recruiting class we brought in are the guys that are going to be third-year players for us,” said Dunleavy. “That’s Tyrese Williams, Savion Lewis, Matt Balanc, Tyree Pickron. We really want to invest in those guys, and then obviously, having a senior leader coming back like Jacob Rigoni — who was on the preseason all-conference team last year and should be again this year, and is an incredible leader — you build around what you’ve got, and I think we have a lot. And we’re excited about what we have. We have a lot to work with, that’s for sure.”

In Rigoni, Quinnipiac has a battle-tested veteran who now shifts from the role of third option to the likely focal point of the Bobcats’ offense, a change his coach feels he is more than suited to undertake.

“I have no doubt,” Dunleavy said of Rigoni’s ability to be the primary aggressor. “I think we’ve really benefited from having a lot of options offensively for us the last few years, and he’s been a guy that’s sacrificed in terms of role, touches, and this year, he’ll have to take a heavy load of our offense — not just shooting threes, but being more of a guy that we play through — and I think he’s really excited to do that. He’s ready for it.”

“Tyrese Williams will be an integral part of what we do, a guy that we play through, a go-to guy that’s going to have the ball in his hands. That much, we know. When he’s played really well for us, our record is off the charts, and it’s not a matter of playing well or poorly, it’s his aggressiveness. That’s going to have to be the case this year.”

Seven-footer Seth Pinkney and swingman Brendan McGuire both return for their sophomore seasons — the former expected to be more of a game-changing rim protector, the latter now 100 percent again after playing the final two months of last year with a separated shoulder — and will mentor a quartet of freshmen headlined by Jamil Riggins of Philadelphia, who redshirted, as well as New England guard Bol Akot. All in all, the sum of Quinnipiac’s parts combined to form a talented nucleus, which Dunleavy believes will take the next step in much the same vein his previous squads have, a nod to the Bobcat staff’s knack for player development.

“I’m confident in this group’s ability to compete in this league,” he asserted. “Our biggest goal is to be a two-way team, a team that can be a top 5 offense and a top 5 defense by the end of the year. If you’re those things, you’re going to be there with a chance in the end.”

Rider turns page from historic senior class as Broncs retool

 

Kevin Baggett loses four 1,000-point scorers and only returns four players from last year’s Rider team, but Broncs’ coach is hopeful that his group will continue to improve heading into March. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Last March provided an unfortunately all too familiar feeling for Rider, a program with mounds of promise and postseason prospects abound, only to have it ripped right out of its hands.

Only this time, unlike the Broncs’ recent early exits in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, this latest run was stalled due to extenuating circumstances beyond anyone’s control, as the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the entire balance of the 2019-20 season nationwide, just several hours before Rider was to take the court in the MAAC tournament quarterfinals against Niagara.

“We were in the hotel, and I finally got the call from our athletic director, Don Harnum, that the games had been called off,” Kevin Baggett recollected as Rider was stripped of an opportunity to play for a conference championship in the closest atmosphere to a home-court advantage it had in almost two decades, playing in Atlantic City, within two hours from the Broncs’ Lawrenceville campus. “I had to call a team meeting, and it was one of those abrupt endings that everybody was just caught off guard. There was not much to be said, but we had been hearing different reports from other leagues, so I don’t think everyone was surprised.”

The game — or at least, the preparation for it — has since resumed as Rider and the rest of the nation begins the slow healing process and return to play amid COVID-19, and the changes to the everyday operations in the game have been profound over the past six months.

“COVID changed a lot of things for us,” Baggett said, referencing that he remains unable to get his entire roster on the floor at the same time, working instead in groups of four for individual workouts at the present moment. “We had to learn how to recruit differently, being that we weren’t allowed on campus. We had to lean on scouting services, we really took to Synergy a great deal, and we had to take to our virtual tours that Rider offers to every student.”

“Where we are now, it’s a lot of protocol, trying to make sure we protect each and every one of our players at this point, to make sure we can hopefully have a season,” he continued, mentioning all Rider personnel has a phone application that helps to electronically monitor symptoms and compliance with medical guidelines. We’ve not really practiced, actually Monday was the first time we practiced. We have 16 guys, so that’s four sessions of 45 minutes to an hour a day, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We’re just trying to spread everybody out and protect our athletes, protect our players, protect our coaches. Everything is new, everything is different. Guys have to call over and come into the office now, there’s no more just showing up.”

Showing up is placed at an even greater premium this season, as the Broncs welcome seven incoming freshmen and three sophomores to a group that must replace a quartet of 1,000-point scorers in Stevie Jordan, Tyere Marshall, Frederick Scott and Dimencio Vaughn, the latter two of whom were graduate transfers to Boston College and the University of Mississippi, respectively.

“When you talk about Stevie, Dimencio, Tyere, Fred, those were all four-year guys that came through the program, all of them were 1,000-point scorers,” said Baggett. “Stevie left one assist out on the table that he would have broken in that next game to be the all-time assist leader in Rider’s history. You talk about graduating a lot of points, a group of guys that helped us win a lot of games, they’re tough to replace. They had a great career for us, we won the league (in 2017-18). To replace those guys is going to be difficult, but I like the group we have coming in.

Tasked with the responsibility of filling Jordan's shoes as the Broncs’ floor general will be sophomore Christian Ings, who — along with junior forward Ajiri Ogemuno-Johnson — makes up the bulk of Rider’s incumbent experience. Ings showed flashes of potential as a freshman, and his coach was convinced enough to offer glowing optimism about his ability to lead the offense.

“It’s his offense to run,” Baggett declared, underscoring Ings’ role. “We’re counting on him to take the next step. He really worked this summer on his body, on watching film of himself all summer long. We’re certainly leaning on him and giving him the ball, and asking him to lead us as a point guard and be our floor general for us.”

Ings, Johnson, Allen Powell and Tyrel Bladen, who redshirted last season, are the sole returning players on a roster that has a dozen new faces. A short turnaround is not uncommon in the MAAC, particularly within Rider’s home state, as Shaheen Holloway led a Saint Peter’s team with six freshmen and three sophomores to a runner-up finish in the league a year ago. Baggett might not have as meteoric a rise this season, but his confidence and optimism is plentiful just the same.

“I’m confident,” he restated. “We have a different mixture. We have a couple of junior college guys, we have a fifth-year guy in Rodney Henderson, the five high school guys and the four returning players. We graduate a lot of points, so that’s always a concern, but the cupboard’s not bare. I’ve got confidence in myself and our staff that we’ll coach these guys up and get them better, and get them ready to go come November 25.”

Ensor optimistic MAAC will be able to play basketball amid COVID-19

Rich Ensor released scheduling model for MAAC Thursday morning, and commissioner remains confident in his conference being able to fit as much basketball as possible into 2020-21 season amid COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Sports Business Daily)

When most conferences were scrambling to cancel what was left of their conference tournaments on the morning of March 12, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference was among the last leagues still playing out the remnants of a 2019-20 season that would be preempted by the COVID-19 pandemic mere hours later.

The MAAC’s decision to wait was not for lack of information, however, as commissioner Rich Ensor wanted to ensure that everything was laid out on the table in detail before making the call to bring his conference championships to a screeching halt.

“As we started that morning and got to the arena, we had a meeting with our athletic directors and senior women’s administrators, and we were talking about what we were doing with basketball and spring sports,” Ensor recalled as he detailed the course of action from the MAAC’s tournament setup in Atlantic City six months ago. “At that point, and frankly throughout the weekend, at no point were we told by the state of New Jersey or Atlantic City that we would have to shut down the tournament. It was really just the cascading number of decisions that were being made across the country locking down tournaments, so I convened a meeting of the MAAC Council of Presidents, and it all just came to a head at some point where it looked like the NCAA was going to shut it down later that day, so it made sense to shut it down and send the athletes home, and ensure that they get to a safe environment.”

The safe environment continues to be the main objective entering the fourth quarter of 2020, with Ensor and the MAAC unveiling a scheduling model Thursday that will see each of the conference’s 11 members condense a 20-game league schedule into 12 weeks, with games on Tuesday and Friday each week, plus a built-in window at the end of February to allow for rescheduling of games that may ultimately be postponed due to positive COVID-19 tests incurred during the year.

“During that process, we were talking about, ‘How do we want to approach basketball this year? What’s our major focus and goal as we look to start the season, and how do we achieve it?’ Ensor said as he described the working group the MAAC set up among presidents Patrick Leahy (Monmouth), Gregory Dell’ Omo (Rider), Seamus Carey (Iona) and Mark Nemec (Fairfield), along with Quinnipiac senior women’s administrator Sarah Fraser and athletic directors Bill Maher (Canisius), Tim Murray (Marist) and John D’Argenio (Siena). “It’s been a three-month process, and first of all, we established the goal of the safety of the student-athletes, coaches, and everyone involved with the games. That goal was the bedrock upon which we built our basketball model, and the second goal within the basketball model was that the focus had to be on completing the conference season. All else was secondary.”

“As you look at our model and the spacing, we rapidly decided two games a week, three days between games. The dates themselves were determined by our contract with ESPN. We’re waiting for the NCAA to tell us what the testing protocols are going to be for basketball. It looks like it’s going to require three tests a week, so when we were building the model, we used that as a guide. If we have to do three tests a week, how much time do we need between games in order to do these tests? That’s how that was all built. Now if the NCAA comes back with a different testing model, and they may very well, then we may be able to condense that back to two-day spacing. The open week was really an opportunity to have some space built in where games could be rescheduled if needed because of any disruptions caused by the pandemic.”

As a commissioner of a basketball-centric conference, Ensor and his staff were able to get out ahead of Power 5 leagues currently preoccupied with managing football during the pandemic, and as such, were able to devise the aforementioned framework. With limited resources in comparison to the heavyweights of Division I, Ensor recognized the need to be both proactive and fiscally responsible, the latter coming into play when the MAAC assessed potential non-conference bubble scenarios that were ultimately deemed too expensive for the league to operate.

“We were proactive because we have a basketball focus in this league,” he reiterated. “We work on basketball 24/7, 12 months all year, so it was just natural for us to get working on these models as soon as we could. When we started the process, we were only thinking about conference games for the whole season. We did a lot of work on a bubble at the Albany Convention Center that would also have used the Times Union Center, and we also looked at a bubble model with the America East Conference, but it was just too expensive, frankly, for what we were going to get out of it.”

“We don’t know that November 25 is going to be the first day yet. It could very well be pushed back into December. We’re all hoping we get there on the 25th, but as we’ve seen with other sports, we could certainly have disruptions. The thing about the MAAC model is we can adjust it based on whatever start date they come up with, because we did build in some extra time there at the end of the season to where we could move games if we had to.”

The commissioner also announced that fans would not be permitted at MAAC games until December 23 at the earliest, as all parties involved continue to adapt to a season that will have a different look and feel, but the same end game. Despite the sacrifices made on and off the floor, Ensor still believes the season will be able to get off the ground for the most part, even if he still draws the line at saying it will be completed in full.

“I’m confident we’re going to have a season,” he declared. “When you say completed, with all teams playing 20 games, I’m less confident about that. We may have different amounts of games completed depending on what kind of disruptions we run into, but we do have tiebreakers and other policies in place to figure out how that’ll be handled. I’m confident that we’ll have a season, but when you say completed, that’s open to interpretation.”