Anderson not frustrated so much by Iona’s winless record than by lack of execution

Iona’s 0-3 start has left Tobin Anderson bewildered, but still optimistic that Gaels will find a rhythm sooner rather than later. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — Tobin Anderson’s first go-round at Iona was marked by peaks and valleys, ebbs and flows of player development and signs of a cohesion building in his team.

Having to once again overhaul the Gaels’ roster in its entirety this past summer after Osborn Shema graduated and the remainder of the team entered the transfer portal, a honeymoon period would be a reasonable expectation. As Anderson put together a challenging non-conference schedule to test a team that had, by all accounts, seemed to develop a bond among itself faster than last year’s outfit, bullish predictions began to take root.

But after a near-upset of Princeton in the season opener gave way to being outplayed by Hofstra and an inability to make shots for a majority of the evening Tuesday against Delaware, Iona stands winless through its first three contests. It gets no easier for the Gaels, as perennial America East power Vermont and high-major West Virginia are next on the docket for a team whose coach is searching for an answer and coming away—for the most part through the first two weeks of this young season—largely empty-handed.

“We could have been 0-2 playing well,” an exasperated Anderson posited Tuesday. “The record notwithstanding, I don’t like how we’re playing. I don’t think we’re playing very well in general, and the hard part to me—and nobody cares—is we’re practicing well. Tom Bonacum, my assistant, was like, ‘if we don’t play well (Tuesday), what the hell?’ We didn’t play well.”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, all you can do is put your head down and go to work. Searching for what’s gone wrong delays the fact that we just have to get better. We’re still trying to figure stuff out, but I don’t think there’s any excuse. We should be playing better than we’re playing right now, and it’s frustrating. I wish I had more to say, but I think that’s basically it.”

Anderson attempted to shake up his starting lineup Tuesday in an attempt to both reward some of his better practice performers and motivate his sluggish starters. It worked in the case of forward Yaphet Moundi, who responded to coming off the bench by collecting 16 points and 18 rebounds in the losing effort against Delaware, but for other veterans such as Clarence Rupert and James Patterson, the spark has still yet to be ignited consistently.

“I believe in this team,” Anderson reiterated. “I believe in everything around us, I really do. But I’m not happy about where we’re at, and the reality is where we’re at is not where I thought we’d be after three games, and I’m not even concerned about the record. I don’t like how we’re playing, so we gotta change that. I freaking hate changing the lineup—I don’t like it—but right now, we’re trying to figure out how guys can play better together, so we’re experimenting a little bit. And I hate it. You should go to the bench and know what you’re getting. We don’t have that right now. We should know what we’re getting from those older guys, and that’s just not happening right now.”

Iona shot just over 30 percent from the field for the night Tuesday, mired in a slump during the first half in which the Gaels missed 30 of their 38 attempts and all but one of their 3-point looks. Freshman Adam Njie has blended well with Northern Colorado transfer Dejour Reaves in the backcourt, but much like other areas of the team, the consistency has stk yet to introduce itself.

“When you’re missing shots, one of two things happen,” said Anderson. “You’re either a good shooter taking bad shots, or you’re a bad shooter. I think we’ve got some guys who are good shooters taking bad shots. That’s more my opinion than anything else. I think there’s a lot of guys who can make shots that aren’t taking great shots, so there’s a lot of misses.”

“But this team’s not built to be a tremendous offensive team, this team’s built to be a defensive, tough, hard-nosed, grind-it-out team, and that’s the part that we’re not right now. We’ve been that way all summer, we’ve been that way all fall. We’re not as together as we need to be. We’re missing shots, but what’s our assist total? We’re not making the right play for our teammates and that kind of thing, and that’s frustrating, but we’ll get there.”

Last year, Iona appeared to hit its nadir in a December blowout against Saint Joseph’s, a game marked by similar frustration and concerns expressed by Anderson about the performance of his roster. If any positive is to come from this, it could be that it is better to have identified the root cause of the issues through three games as opposed to the last stages of the non-conference season. Regardless, Anderson is not taking the easy way out or crafting excuses, he is just as committed to working through the problem as any other coach would be.

“Our job is to put together a well-oiled basketball team,” he reiterated. “We’re not playing that way right now. The chemistry off the court is unbelievable. They love each other, but we don’t play like it. We don’t play like we love each other, and that’s an issue. Does that take time? Yeah, I think it takes some time, but I think we should be further along. We’ve gotta play that way. We don’t yet instinctively share the ball. That has to happen. We have to play better. That’s all there is to it.”