Iona locks down Siena with late comeback, stifles Saints in MAAC quarters

Isaiah Ross (20) and Asante Gist (2) led Iona’s comeback in second half to down top seed Siena in MAAC tournament quarterfinals. (Photo by Matthew Strabuk/The Press of Atlantic City)

In 2004, on the heels of yet another loss he and his Boston Red Sox team had taken to the New York Yankees, Pedro Martinez summed up his frustration with a candid observation that still resonates around the Bronx to this day and has followed the Hall of Fame hurler around long after his playing days ended.

“What can I say?” Martinez, at a loss for words, told a gaggle of reporters. “I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy.”

Siena fans, no doubt exasperated by their team’s inability to defeat Iona, may soon be saying the same following Wednesday’s Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference quarterfinal matchup, the latest renewal of a perennially heated rivalry between the two schools.

Leading by nine points with 8:33 remaining in regulation, the regular season champion Saints appeared poised to finally break the cycle and coast into the semifinals. But a scoring drought and a 16-0 Iona run changed the narrative of the final eight minutes, and when all was said and done, the ninth-seeded Gaels walked off the Boardwalk Hall floor having stolen a 55-52 victory to up their all-time postseason record over Siena to 11-0.

“When the game was on the line and we were down, we didn’t hang our heads and say, ‘we’re not making shots,’” Rick Pitino intimated as Iona won for the 15th time in its last 16 MAAC tournament games. “I said, ‘just be the better defensive team.’”

“They never hung their heads. They just wanted to win the game, and what happened? They got rewarded.”

In the face of an anemic 25 percent shooting display, it appeared for a large part of the evening that the only reward awaiting the Gaels (10-5) would be a return trip up the Garden State Parkway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge back into Westchester County after Siena used its own defensive efforts to hold Iona at bay. An Aidan Carpenter 3-pointer shortly before the first half came to a close put the Saints in the driver’s seat with a 24-21 lead going to the intermission, one that was built on in the final stanza in a stretch of transition offense and consecutive dunks by Jalen Pickett and Colin Golson that vaulted Siena’s cushion to a comfortable 42-33 margin and prompted Pitino into a second timeout of the final period.

“I kept telling them in every timeout, ‘We’re gonna win this game. Just keep playing defense,’” Pitino recounted. “When you hold (Manny) Camper to six points and Pickett to 10 points, you’re playing really good defense. They were locked in, they rebounded very well the last two nights, we’re still a little out of shape, but mentally, they’re tough guys.”

“The crazy thing is, every time we get a rhythm or a win streak, we go into quarantine,” Isaiah Ross added. “It definitely sparked us because we know we would not be a 9-seed in this tournament. We would definitely be higher.”

While Iona moves on to face Marist or Niagara depending on how Thursday's last quarterfinal matchup plays out, Siena (12-5) now heads back to the Capital Region to reassess what went wrong after a game in which head coach Carmen Maciariello pulled no punches in rating his team’s performance.

“We just didn’t have it,” he intoned. “We have to get better. We get a lead and we relax. That’s the time when you’ve got to go for the kill, that’s the time you’ve got to execute. At the end of the day, we have to get better. That’s it.”

“They’re fun to coach because they want to win so badly,” Pitino proclaimed. Sometimes when you don’t play well and you want to win so badly, you can will yourself to victory. That’s what we did tonight.”