Quinnipiac can’t exorcise demons, falls to Iona in MAAC tournament semifinals

Amarri Monroe goes for layup as Quinnipiac saw its championship bid end Friday against Iona. (Photo by Quinnipiac Athletics)

By Ethan Hurwitz (@HurwitzSports)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The ending wasn’t as jarring as the year prior — Iona had built a comfortable, eight-point lead — but another loss in the MAAC tournament semifinals was just as stunning to Quinnipiac as the last time it happened.

Junior forward Amarri Monroe, who left the game with a shot to the head before returning, was visibly upset in the postgame press conference. Seventh-year guard Savion Lewis, sitting to Monroe’s right, took the same questions he had to answer after last year’s Bobcats’ buzzer-beater loss to Saint Peter’s in the same building. Head coach Tom Pecora put on a smile he’s unwillingly had to nail down.

“One of the things I talked to every team I’ve ever coached is like, this is basketball, it’s not life and death,” Pecora said. “So no tears. Life goes on. We had an opportunity, we didn’t take advantage of it. If it becomes something we learned from, then we become better men. And you know, I’m proud to call these two guys and all those guys in the locker room my friends.”

It’s hard for this team to really let tonight’s result sink in. They felt like the season, one that was supposed to “finish the job” of years past, was going to be this program’s crowning achievement.

“Obviously we’re upset, but as captains, you know you can’t really put your head down, because the younger guys see it down and they’ll put their head down,” Monroe said. “So right now, we’re trying to be positive. Like Coach said, no one died. We have to move on.”

All the MAAC’s top seed had to do was play Bobcat basketball to advance in the bracket. It had to not struggle shooting the ball from deep, the rebounding on both ends had to remain a strong suit, and Quinnipiac would have cut the nets down for the first time. In Wednesday’s win over Rider, it was clear that if any Bobcat team was to win its first conference tournament, this one would have been the one.

Two days later, a feisty Iona team — playing in its second game in as many days — punched Quinnipiac in the mouth and negated a late surge to return to the MAAC title game. Freshman Adam Njie (21 points, six assists) and senior Dejour Reaves (23 points, six rebounds) ate the Bobcat defense alive, and struggles on both sides of the paint gave the Gaels an edge in a department that the MAAC’s top team dominated all year.

“I thought we did a great job defensively, because they are an unbelievable, explosive team,” Iona head coach Tobin Anderson said. “We got a good start.”

A slow first half put the Bobcats behind the 8-ball heading into the locker room, and scary injuries for Monroe and freshman guard Jaden Zimmerman didn’t help anything in the second. When you tack on that Lewis spent a lot of time on the bench with four fouls and an uncharacteristically poor performance from graduate forward Paul Otieno (four points, 1-for-6 from the field), it felt like a nightmare night for Quinnipiac.

And yet, somehow the team had clawed back to even the score up at 57 midway through the second half. In the final game of the year — the team won’t return to any postseason tournaments like it did last season — a glimmer of positivity arose.

“We’ve been resilient all year,” Monroe said. “At halftime, we’re down 10 and we told ourselves, ‘you know, we’ve been down all year, multiple games, and always dug our way back, and we dug our way back tonight.’”

They dug their way back — all the way back from 14 at one point — but a consistent hole in the Bobcats’ defensive scheme let Iona junior forward Yaphet Moundi continually feast inside. A late surge where the Gaels just kept finding the bottom of the net made it clear that another loss in the tournament was inevitable. It still hit home for the Bobcats.

“It feels terrible,” Lewis said. “I’m trying to hold my emotions right now, just knowing that this was my last time playing with Quinnipiac and I wasn’t able to finish the job. But you know, I believe that left a legacy here for the young guys that they’re going to carry on and be able to finish it in the years coming.”

So what do the Bobcats turn to in 2025-26? There’s going to be a number of roster turnover heading into next season. Lewis is gone, and Monroe is destined for a large paycheck in the transfer portal, if he were to enter. Other players, like Otieno and senior guard Doug Young both have additional years of JUCO eligibility, but it’s yet to be seen if they will be used. Pecora said the team has one, potentially two scholarships to offer and upcoming portal entries may impact that.

“I gotta re-recruit the guys that are in the program, some of them, because people are gonna come and throw false promises to them and promise the world, and throw numbers at them and try to get these guys to leave,” Pecora said. “The great thing about being at Quinnipiac is it’s such a darn good place, a lot of them, I think, are going to be more comfortable staying and going like Amarri did. I mean, Amarri got offered six figures by multiple schools, and he stayed. Savion got offered a good amount of money. So did Paul, and they decided to stay because they wanted to get their degrees.”

It’s safe to say that this Quinnipiac team will look drastically different than it did the past two years, where it claimed back-to-back regular season titles. The Bobcats of next fall will just hope to avoid the same fate that their predecessors suffered in Atlantic City.