Iona poised and confident entering NCAA matchup with UConn

MAAC champion Iona faces stiff test against UConn Friday, but Gaels ride in on 14-game win streak and quiet confidence. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

ALBANY, N.Y. — Iona has been a fixture on the postseason stage for most of the past decade, yet the NCAA Tournament experience is still uncharted territory for a majority of the Gaels’ roster.

That said, having the veteran voice and past experiences of Rick Pitino as a source of guidance has paid off handsomely for an Iona team who gets its latest taste of March Madness on a 14-game win streak, and has helped prepare his latest group of pupils for its biggest challenge to date.

“That’s all he talks about, from the beginning of the season to the end,” point guard Daniss Jenkins said of Pitino’s March resume, which gets enhanced Friday when he leads 13th-seeded Iona into a West Regional battle with UConn. “Now he’s just trying to get us to have that mindset that those teams had that he took to the Final Four and national championship. He just tries to tell us some of the things they did and how they approached certain things.”

“I feel like he lives for this,” Berrick JeanLouis added. “He loves basketball a lot and he even says in practice, ‘I’ll die for basketball, I want to die on a basketball court. He talks crazy about it, so it’s exciting for us and him. He just wants us to get the experience he had and wants us to make memories with each other to have forever.”

JeanLouis draws the closest parallel to Pitino among his teammates, as he helped lead Iona to the NCAA Tournament two years ago. The Gaels fought valiantly against Alabama through most of the second half, and as one of the elder statesmen on the squad, JeanLouis has been increasingly vocal in the preparation for his second go-round in the field of 68.

“I told the guys that everybody has to be super confident with themselves and believe in themselves,” he revealed. “We have to stick as a team and just play together, play hard, stay focused, and everything will work out well. I feel like the first year when we played (Alabama), we played great the first half, and then in the second half, we crumbled and kind of went away from what we did. So I’ve tried to let them know if we do what we do, anything can happen.”

An added wrinkle in Iona’s scouting of the Huskies lies on its bench. Assistant coach Taliek Brown, who handled the scout against Marist in the MAAC championship game, arrived in New Rochelle late in the offseason after serving as Dan Hurley’s director of player development at UConn, where he also won a national championship under Jim Calhoun in 2004. His intimate knowledge of his alma mater has already proven to be instrumental in helping his current employer prepare.

“He knows who they are, he knows what they’re about,” Jenkins said of Brown. “He’s just trying to tell us some of the key things they pride themselves on so we can take that away from them, preparing us very good for the scout because he knows this team very well.”

Like Iona, UConn possesses a pair of dynamic guards who can impact the game on both sides of the floor, in point guard Tristen Newton and sophomore sharpshooter Jordan Hawkins. However, the Huskies’ rebounding has drawn a concern for the Gaels, who will try to match the talent and physicality of a team ranked as high as second in the country earlier this season.

“A little bit,” Jenkins said of the similarities between Iona and UConn. “We’re trying to rebound as good as they do. They rebound very well, we try to do that. As far as some of the other things, we’re kind of similar. We like to shoot threes, they’ll play fast with you, they’ll pressure you, so some of those things are very similar to our style of play.”

“It’s anybody’s ballgame,” Pitino concurred. “We’ve got great respect for Connecticut. They’re not a 4 seed. I think we all know, those who have watched them, they could go to a Final Four and win a national championship, they’re so deep, so talented. And we’re a pretty good team as well.”

Another factor surrounding Iona this week has been the ever-present chatter surrounding Pitino’s immediate future, with rumors linking him to the head coaching vacancies at St. John’s, Georgetown and Texas Tech. The Hall of Fame mentor has sidestepped any speculation and continues to dispel any notion that the presumed uncertainty is a distraction, upholding his commitment to his current team and the task at hand, something his players corroborated.

“The internet’s going to talk,” said Walter Clayton, Jr., the MAAC Player of the Year. “We don’t talk about it. We’re here to win games, that’s it.”

“It’s not a distraction for them at all,” Pitino reiterated. “I’ve always taken it as a compliment throughout all the years if somebody else is interested in you. I’m very thankful for that, but I never pay attention to it. We never talk about it. The players expect everything I have as a coach to try and win this game, and that’s it. It’s all about Iona.”