The MAAC has had a historic start to the season, with eight of 10 teams starting at 1-1, but the most historic start might be for the undefeated Canisius Golden Griffins.
Canisius’ Hot Start
Canisius recorded road wins at Fairfield and at Marist to go 6-1 on the season, its best start since the 1973-74 season, making a school record 17 three pointers in its 94-82 win over Marist Sunday.
Junior point guard Billy Baron had 19 points, 8 rebounds and a career-high 11 assists in the Griffs win at Marist. The Rhode Island transfer was named MAAC Player of the Week for the first weekend of conference play while also receiving the Lou Henson Player of the Week Award, for the top player in Mid-Major college basketball.
Baron is fifth in the MAAC in scoring with 17.7 points per game and has 42 assists to just 19 turnovers.
Fairfield head coach Sydney Johnson said that Baron was the best player on the floor for Canisius on Friday night in their 67-55 win over the Stags.
“I’d say hands down [Billy Baron],” Johnson said. “I just have a high level of respect for the young man. He kind of pulls all the pieces together and makes it easier for them to play. It doesn’t mean he can’t be guarded or he can’t be stopped, but he’s a fine player and we all saw that first hand on Friday.”
Canisius head coach Jim Baron said that his team needs to work on improving their defense moving forward before conference play starts up again in January.
“We got to play better defense,” Baron said. “We’re giving up too many open looks. We got to do a better job of that, also we’re playing real aggressive and getting us into foul trouble. We’ve got to be smarter. We can be aggressive but we have to be smarter on the defensive end.”
The Golden Griffins still have a bunch of tests remaining with road trips to Syracuse, Temple, UNLV and Detroit to close out 2012 to go along with two home games before jumping back into conference play.
“We have to worry about ourselves,” Baron said. “This is a very good conference and you can’t overlook anybody. In this conference, anybody is capable of beating anyone so we have to worry about ourselves and worry about the next game and worry about keep working to get better.”
Fairfield’s Clutch Road Victory
While Fairfield was not able to beat the Griffs in its first home game of the 2012-13 season, the Stags were able to head to Rider on Sunday and close out their first MAAC weekend at .500 with a 65-52 win. Fairfield trailed by as many as 13 in the first half after withstanding a 17-0 Rider run, but started the second half on a 16-1 run and closed out the Broncs with a 65-52 road win.
“I just think the guys showed a lot of guts to weather the storm,” Johnson said of his team who trailed by four at halftime. “So then at halftime we just talked about taking care of the ball better. We had 17 turnovers in the first half and then we added a few defensive tweaks and were able to kind of build some momentum.”
Johnson said that playing against DePaul earlier in the season, who feature a similar full court press to Rider, helped their composure against the Broncs tough defense. While Fairfield struggled in its first conference game, in which Johnson said his team was outplayed in the first half by Canisius and lacked some senior leadership.
“Our upperclassmen rallied,” Johnson said. “We played much better in the second half versus Canisius, it just seemed too little too late.”
Moving forward Johnson said it will be important to replicate the consistent play that he said Canisius showed them Friday night.
“We learned that if we play 40 minutes with a little bit of a chip on our shoulder, if we play 40 minutes where we’re focused on the stuff that we actually work on in practice that we can be competitive and we can have success,” Johnson said. “Any time that we’re taking three to four minutes or five or six minutes in game where we’re just kind of easing into it or we’re not playing with a sense of urgency, we’re going to get beat.”
Rider Goes Up And Down
Rider head coach Kevin Baggett’s team had a chance to go 2-0 in conference, but on Sunday saw signs of a team that fell apart at the wrong time.
After holding on for a 62-56 win at Siena Friday, when a lead as large as 13 was cut to five with under three and a half minutes to play, the Broncs were able to hold on by making their free throws for the win.
The Broncs used a consistent game plan of swarming Siena’s post players, including First Team All-MAAC member O.D. Anosike.
“The focus was on O.D.,” Baggett said. “I didn’t want to do it on one person and not the other because sometimes I think you screw your guys up doing that. Our focus was if it went in we just make sure we doubled whomever and we’re trying to keep O.D. from scoring but also try and make their bigs make decisions on where and how they’re going to throw the ball out of the post.”
“I think post guys don’t work on that enough, being able to throw out of the double teams and make the right decisions, that was our focus to force their hand and make the right decisions so that was our focus to force those guys to make the right decisions.”
While doubling the post it also forced Siena’s shooters to make jump shots, which they were able to shut down early and take a 10 point lead into half time.
However, Baggett said he saw signs at the end of the game Friday that would haunt his team Sunday.
“They started to make some shots in the end when we were doing it,” Baggett said. “That’s where I was glad that we didn’t have as much time on the clock because they were figuring it out.”
Not only was the defense being broken but the Broncs were turning the ball over late, which gave Siena chances to get the lead under five points in the final three minutes.
“I thought we had a little bit of carry over in not taking care of the ball,” Baggett said. “We were struggling towards the end of the Siena game but managed to hold on and make some free throws at the end.”
Baggett said they weren’t able to clean up their mistakes, after returning late Friday night from Albany. The Broncs practiced for a short amount of time Saturday and felt the carry over from Friday on Sunday.
“I never felt good that we were playing well because we had been turning the ball over that game and it started at the end of the Siena game,” Baggett said. “Even though we were up by 13, it was never a good 13, and we turned the ball over 30 times. It looked like a tired team and we looked like a team that did not practice or play in a long time so I really don’t have an answer for that.”
“It’s just too bad we don’t play soon enough to get that taste out of our mouths.”
Rider had its first practice since Sunday’s loss on Wednesday, having watched the Fairfield game and diagnosed the issues with the team during Tuesday’s film session.
The Broncs play next on December 20th at Princeton and while Rider will be on the road for its next four games, Baggett stressed the importance of improving at home, where they are 2-4 this season.
“We haven’t played well at home,” Baggett said. “The one thing I’m happy about is we’ve been able to play well on the road and once we get home, I can’t put my finger on why we don’t play well at home, but that’s something that we’ve talked about.”
“I want them to understand that when you’re home you’ve got to protect your home court.”
Siena’s Rocky Start
For Siena, protecting the home court has been even tougher. The Saints have yet to register their first win this season at the Times Union Center.
In their opening MAAC loss to Rider, head coach Mitch Buonaguro pulled sophomore guard Evan Hymes with just under 15 minutes left in the game and let redshirt-sophomore Rahkeem Brookins run point for the team which sparked the run that made it tight down the stretch.
“I wanted the energy level picked up,” Buonaguro said. “The thing about Brookins is he plays with unbelievable energy. I think when you see him on the floor his energy level really resonates with the other guys.”
“He’s got really a high motor when he plays so I thought putting him in, nothing against Evan, I just thought we needed an injection of some energy and that’s what Rahk did. He brought the team back not only with some great plays but also with his energy level so you get that feel as a coach sometimes that you need an energy boost.”
That energy boost fell short as the Broncs were carried by Jonathan Thompson’s game high 20 points and Athony Miles’ 12 points.
“I really thought Myles and Thompson were the difference in our game,” Buonaguro said. “Certainly [Nurideen] Lindsey’s good but Rider’s going to be a pesky team.”
Sunday the Saints traveled to Manhattan to face a George Beamon-less Jaspers but were unable to withstand the pressure, falling 75-55 to start 0-2.
“I thought we handled [Manhattan’s pressure],” Buonaguro said. “But they do turn you over at times and they created some offense for them. They had been struggling scoring but they got good production from [Shane] Richards and [RaShawn] Stores.”
Siena is still working on their final spot in the starting lineup. After starting Imoh Silas, Davis Martens and Trenity Burdine at the power forward spot, Buonaguro turned to freshman Brett Bisping to make the start Sunday, but said he is still working on solving that spot in the lineup.
“We’ll figure that out in the next two weeks and kind of get set on a starting lineup with that piece of the puzzle fixed,” Buonaguro said.
St. Peter’s Splits At Home
The puzzle that has challenged St. Peter’s head coach John Dunne over the past week is building chemistry with his new group of players and breaking what was a four-game losing streak in his first MAAC game.
After trailing Iona by as many as 11 in the first half, Dunne said his team showed the toughness he was looking for in the second half to come back and end their losing streak.
“I think every game is a learning curve for us,” Dunne said. “We’re such a new group and what I like is out of [the Iona win] is we responded to adversity. They got up 10, we didn’t hang our heads and just give in even though we were on a four-game losing streak.”
“We stayed mentally tough and we gave ourselves a chance to win. If you do that you’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some but I just like the fact that we competed hard in the second half and didn’t put our heads down.”
Blaise Ffrench completed the comeback win with a floater with 4.5 seconds left and shot clock expiring to give the Peacocks a 64-62 win over the Gaels.
For the Peacocks, after starting out 3-0 they have had to battle adversity as well as injuries. Markese Tucker had to sit two games with an injury and Patrick Jackson has been battling a chipped bone in his wrist which has limited his effectiveness.
On Saturday at the Izod Center the Peacocks fought Loyola (MD) and kept it close, while the Greyhounds were without Erik Etherly with his shoulder injury, but could not withstand Loyola’s tough team effort.
Without Etherly, Anthony Winbush led the Greyhounds with 16 points to go with 8 rebounds and Robert Olson iced the game with free throws late to give Loyola a 1-1 record in conference play.
“They just know how to play together,” Dunne said of Loyola. “They’re a confident group.”
For now, Dunne said that the Peacocks are constantly working on improving everywhere as well as their chemistry through their 11 day break between games.
“I think what we’ve learned is we had such a new group that I think our chemistry is getting better as the days go on,” Dunne said. “The biggest thing we’ve learned is we can beat just about anybody that’s on our schedule but we could lose to anybody on our schedule. We’ve got to come out with the right frame of mind, play hard attitude and if we do that we’ll give ourselves a chance to win.”
“It’s a long season and we’re just trying to get better everyday. Hopefully while we’re doing that win our fair share, win enough games to keep confidence and hopefully we’ll be playing our best basketball come February.”
Ryan Restivo covers the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference for Big Apple Buckets. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ryanarestivo.
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