Iona downs Canisius, clinches MAAC regular season

Elijah Joiner led Iona as Gaels defeated Canisius to clinch MAAC regular season championship. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — The accolades have started to roll in for Iona. The next order of business is now backing them up.

The Gaels, having already clinched the automatic bid to the National Invitation Tournament on Tuesday when Monmouth defeated Siena to assure Iona the No. 1 seed in next month’s Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, added to their haul Friday by clinching the regular season MAAC championship — the program’s first since 2019 — outright with a 72-63 victory over Canisius inside the Hynes Athletics Center.

“I think we played pretty well in spurts,” Elijah Joiner, who recorded 16 points and seven assists, remarked. “They’re last in our conference, but they could have beat us if this was a game on the road or if we didn’t make plays late in the game. This is a lesson for us that we’ve got to get better, mature as a team on the court and just play hard, no matter what the situation is.”

“We were up 15 and we let them back in the game. Coach talks about teams like Gonzaga, Gonzaga runs their conference and when they get up 15, they go up 20-25 points. I think that’s the point that we’ve got to get to. When we’re up 15, we can’t let teams back into the game. We’ve got to step on their necks and keep on them.”

Iona (23-5, 15-2 MAAC) did indeed hold a 30-15 cushion late in the first half after emerging from a grind-it-out style in the opening minutes, where it struggled to control the basketball in tallying 11 of its 15 turnovers before halftime against the visiting Golden Griffins, who used a 20-4 run bridging the end of the initial stanza with the beginning of the second act to briefly forge a 35-34 lead after consecutive 3-pointers from Ahamadou Fofana and Jacco Fritz poked the Griffs’ head in front.

The lead was short-lived, though, as the Gaels counterpunched with a 16-4 spurt by forcing Canisius into miscues and turning their takeaways into points to hold the lead for the remainder of the evening while the visitors tried to stay within earshot.

“This is their style,” Canisius head coach Reggie Witherspoon said of Iona. “It’s not by accident. They’re going to try and force you in situations like that, where you’re turning it over for touchdowns. It goes the other way, and those are shots they almost can’t miss. And then when you do that, the pressure seems to mount because instead of being aggressive offensively, you’re trying not to turn it over. I think that was the biggest part for us in terms of what went wrong.”

With the top seed in Atlantic City locked up, Iona can afford to look at its three remaining contests — road games at Rider and Manhattan before hosting Quinnipiac in the regular season finale a week from Saturday — with a modicum of comfort knowing most scenarios have already been determined. However, the man responsible for overseeing the potentially historic campaign says maintaining focus is not a major concern.

“I think we practice so hard that it’s not a problem,” Rick Pitino admitted. “I think when you look at this game tonight, it’s a matter of missed free throws, it’s a matter of turnovers. We had 15 turnovers against a team that doesn’t turn you over, but you turn it around defensively and they shoot 38 percent for the game and 18 percent from three, so that’s what wins it on a given night. I don’t think it’s a problem with focus for us.”