Jimmy Patsos Not Worried About Siena Rebuild Effort

There is one thing Siena head coach Jimmy Patsos made abundantly clear.

In his first season he saw his team get swept away by winning the CBI postseason championship, while this past season ended in underwhelming fashion. Patsos insists that his rebuild is on track, as the school has improved their APR scores, while building the foundation of a competitive MAAC program.

Over the last two seasons, he has realized how much the Albany community cares about the Siena product and described the school’s fans as “super educated.”

“They know we’re trying to do it the right way, but every fan wants to win,” Patsos said. “I get it, but I like our fans and I don’t read the message boards or anything like that. You can underline that, I do not read the message boards, so people must waste all this energy. I do not read them, I won’t read them, they mean nothing to me.”

While this past season was a struggle, dealing with two season-ending injuries that drastically changed the personnel he had to deal with, the rebuild is on track for the Siena program.

“It would’ve been better if it was 11 wins and then 20 as oppose to 20 and 11, I get that,” Patsos said. “Over two years, we got good people in here and all that kind of stuff, the school is doing better.”

“I’m just a part of it, it’s not all about us. I know some people wish it was more, I know people wish you should be more like it’s all about basketball and you should be more like tougher on this, I’m a human being. A kid wants to leave, I want to help him leave in the right way.”

Patsos said that he regularly visited with Javion Ogunyemi, who decided to transfer to Boston University after averaging 9.3 ppg and 4.8 rpg as a sophomore, and helped him map out his options when he decided to leave.

“Family member that we love, but he played really well and now I have to adapt to transfers,” Patsos said. “I’m not the only one there either the whole country is.”

It is simple to say that the Saints took two steps forward in Patsos’ first season, followed up by a step back that proved the league wasn’t ready to see a resurgent Siena program in 2015.

“That’s how rebuilding is,” Patsos said alluding to building the program as an assistant to Gary Williams at Maryland and over the course of nine seasons at Loyola (MD). “We battled, but everybody thinks you’re going to climb the mountain just like leaps and bounds, I’m not that naive.”

Ryan Restivo wrote the America East conference preview for the 2014-15 Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook. He covers the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, the America East conference among others  for Big Apple Buckets. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ryanarestivo or contact Ryan at rrestivo[at]nycbuckets.com.