Manhattan returns from pause straight into MAAC play in opening weekend vs. Rider

 

Manhattan begins season Friday with MAAC opener against Rider, a concern for Steve Masiello given lack of non-conference opportunities. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

For those questioning the disparity among non-conference scheduling in this young and unprecedented season, consider this as you wake up on the morning of December 11:

Xavier University has played seven games before its Big East Conference season begins Saturday. Four teams in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference have yet to contest an opening tip, Manhattan being among the unseasoned quartet for another several hours before the Jaspers raise the curtain on 2020-21 by welcoming Rider to Draddy Gymnasium for an Ivy League-style, Friday-Saturday doubleheader that will be prevalent in a majority of leagues this year in an effort to mitigate travel concerns amid the ever-raging COVID-19 pandemic that has wreaked irreversible havoc on whatever comes across its field of vision.

“We’re just excited to see college basketball being played with everything going on in the world,” Manhattan head coach Steve Masiello conceded despite the less-than-ideal setup he and hundreds of other programs will navigate over the next several months. “It’s kind of nice to see the normalcy of teams playing not only across the country, but also in the MAAC.”

A positive test result for one of the Tier 1 personnel within the Jaspers’ program forced a pause of all basketball activity just days before Thanksgiving, effectively wiping out the four non-conference games Manhattan had lined up, but as is the case everywhere in the nation, the show goes on.

“Unfortunately, we’re one of those teams that hasn’t yet played a game,” Masiello reiterated as he leads a Jasper team picked fifth in the MAAC into battle against a Rider program who nearly upset St. John’s in a valiant showing Tuesday. “It’s definitely a concern. Obviously, those were things out of our control. When we were shut down, I thought we were in a pretty good rhythm and getting close to game shape.”

“Coming out of that, you don’t know — this is new, you’re going through this for the first time — we’re just trying to get that foundation back and build it. We’re kind of just seeing where we are. We’re not sure. There’s a lot of question marks about us, and we’ll see what happens when the ball goes up.”

The Jaspers do return three mainstays from last year’s team in junior forwards Warren Williams and Elijah Buchanan and guard Samir Stewart, but five integral pieces of the rotation in Riverdale are new to the program, junior college newcomers Nick Brennen and Marques Watson, as well as transfers Anthony Nelson, Samba Diallo and Jason Douglas-Stanley, all of whom are immediately eligible. While the extra time to acclimate themselves to the competition and pressure they will face is certainly a benefit to the transition process, actual competition is an entirely different animal.

“I think there comes a time when you’ve done preparation and now you’ve got to get feedback,” Masiello cautioned. “We’re at that feedback place where we need to go out and play against other teams to see where our weaknesses are, our strengths are, and now we’ll have that opportunity on Friday. From my standpoint, we have our foundation, we had the preparation, we had some great practices we put together and we wanted to see where we stood against other teams that can give us the feedback on the areas we want to improve on, get better at and emphasize, but we’re not going to have that.”

“We had to raise the bar, raise the standard in practice. That’s something we've been preaching to the guys, trying to create game setting, game environment, game slippage. Hopefully we can kind of offset some of those things as best we can moving forward.”

Despite the unorthodox prefacing to this year’s schedule, there have been more positives than negatives for Masiello to take away, which gives the coach something else to build on aside from the strong performance from other MAAC schools in limited non-league action thus far.

“I think they’ve done a very nice job,” he said. “Guys from Samir Stewart, Matt Glassman, Warren Williams, even the transfers — Samba, Ant and Jason — it’s nice to see guys just stepping up and not running from adversity, or not hiding. I think collectively, they’ve done a very good job of all setting a good example of what we want.”

The well-being of student-athletes and methodology of the NCAA came into question Thursday after Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski announced the Blue Devils would cancel the remainder of the non-conference season, citing physical and mental concerns that have weighed on the players during the offseason and through the start of play amid the pandemic. Several other coaches have voiced their opinions as well, covering both sides of the spectrum, and Masiello is a proponent of finding a way to take the floor in such a manner that looks out for his players’ welfare and keeps his team sharp at the same time.

“I think it’s important that these guys get as many opportunities to compete and play, not only for themselves, but also to make sure we get to that number to where they’re NCAA Tournament-eligible,” he shared. “There’s a lot of things to that. We want to make sure we’re prioritizing the safety and health of the league and our players as well.”