Flying under radar most of season, Marist is at its peak entering MAAC tournament

John Dunne has Marist positioned for best finish in over a decade as Red Foxes enter MAAC tournament. (Photo by Rich Thomaselli/Hudson Valley Sports Report)

With all the uncertainty surrounding the world as of late, perhaps the most comforting sign of normalcy is that of John Dunne bringing a team to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament in top form, its current record a program best in well over a decade.

Such is the case with Dunne’s Marist Red Foxes, who just concluded the regular season Monday with a sweep of Quinnipiac that secured along with it no worse than the No. 4 seed in the MAAC’s annual postseason get-together, which begins on Monday in Atlantic City, but will not see Marist take the floor until Thursday, March 11, by virtue of its 12-8 record (10-8 in MAAC play) and accompanying first-round bye into the quarterfinals.

“We won some games early on where we played well and we played good, but I think we’re becoming a good team at the right time,” a proud Dunne remarked after Monday’s victory. “We’ve just been working, man. There’s been peaks and valleys, but I’m just really proud of these guys to have the winning season and to stay really disciplined, taking care of themselves and trying to stay as healthy as they could.”

“It’s a struggle for everybody, and we feel fortunate that we were able to get through a season, but we’ve got to keep our eye on the prize right now. We feel blessed to have gotten to the finish line with really, only one pause, and it’s not over. At the end of the day, we all want to get to the tournament safely, but we’re just going to have to take what comes and persevere.”

Persevere, Marist did. From leading scorer Michael Cubbage breaking his foot early in the season and being shelved for the remainder of the year, to the development and emergence of three guards — freshmen Ricardo Wright and Hakim Byrd, plus junior college point guard Raheim Sullivan — who had yet to experience the game at the Division I level, the truncated campaign each team in the nation has had to endure hit the Red Foxes particularly hard. So how did a young roster and a coach known for his patient approach and extracting every last drop of talent from his young pupils weather the storm?

“With us, we just gelled,” Wright reflected. “We bonded off the court, so that goes hand in hand. We’ve got a good team off the court, so I didn’t think that would be a big problem. It was just how and when we’d start gelling together.”

“I didn’t know what to expect, to be quite honest with you,” Dunne admitted. “When you’re in those situations and you have the injury, and you have to rely on three inexperienced guys in the backcourt — two freshmen that haven’t been through it and then having to play big minutes and then have back-to-back games every weekend while they’re going through their first year of school and then acclimate academically, and then a junior college player — it’s just not the same. You can’t think about the big picture. You have to think about every day, how can we get better today? How can I help the team grow today?”

Forward Jordan Jones was a huge part of the resurgence. The 6-foot-8 Charleston Southern transfer was initially a rotation piece upon his arrival in Poughkeepsie, yet has expanded his game under the tutelage of Dunne and his staff to average over nine points per game while shooting 59 percent from the floor and blocking 40 shots on the way to potential all-MAAC recognition.

“He didn’t come here as a back-to-the-basket guy,” Dunne said of Jones and his maturation. “He came here as an energy guy, and obviously he’s developed his skill level. Going over both his shoulders is more him than it is us. He figured out that he had talent there and wanted to kind of fine-tune it for him, and on top of that, he demands a crowd when he has the ball in the low post. So he’s really developed his game, and he’s put the work in. He’s always coming up here, watching extra film, taking notes on scouting reports, and he’s just a great role model for the guys. I’m really proud of him and happy for him, and I hope he gets recognized for it.”

“He makes the game so much easier,” Wright countered. “He’s there when you need him to be, and he’s going to finish when you need him to. Honestly, he’s just a hell of a player.”

In the midst of its best season since winning the MAAC regular season 14 years ago, Marist as a program is pointed strongly upward, a credit to Dunne for staying the course in his third year in the Hudson Valley and being rewarded for the fruits of his labor. What began in a shroud of question marks where the coach admittedly did not recognize the Red Foxes’ true ceiling has now ceded to a confident stretch where no matter the result, the progress is clearly tangible.

“There’s so much that goes into it,” Dunne said of the improvement process. “You don’t know until you’re coaching a guy through a season what’s in his head and in his heart, and then you have to get used to each other. But right now, through all the peaks and valleys, I really believe that we’re growing into a really good team right now. It doesn’t guarantee wins, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t be more proud of these guys.”