Niagara head coach Chris Casey has seen plenty of roster turnover as he enters his third season on the job, but that has hardly been a detriment to the kind of program he wants to build.
“The process is to build the roster and we’ve had to build it from very little, but that’s the way it goes,” Casey said. “It’s a process to build the roster and we’re going through it right now.”
The Purple Eagles lost seven players to transfer from the end of last season, including three of their top four scorers. Ramone Snowden and Wesley Myers both left the team via transfer, with the 6’5” Snowden landing at James Madison. Dominique Reid is facing felony charges and is no longer with the program.
Casey said he doesn’t take the departures personally, but that he and his staff are intent on rebuilding the roster until they get it right.
“It makes it more difficult, but to be honest with you, I don’t let that take up any space in my mind,” Casey said. “We just keep moving forward, we keep recruiting, we keep trying to get the roster right and get to a point where we can win consistently.”
So far building a roster to win has been the most difficult part of Casey’s tenure, but the third-year coach attributes most of the transfers to the individual situations of each athlete and doesn’t take it personally.
“In the case of the guys who left us, they don’t want to be here,” Casey said. “That’s a decision they have to make and unfortunately, during the current climate of college basketball, it’s in a lot of places. It doesn’t take up any space in our mind, we’ll just keep moving forward and keep trying to get the roster right.”
Casey has a 15-48 record in two seasons at Niagara. He would like to see that turn around with his newest group, which welcomes eight newcomers including two junior college transfers.
“I don’t sit back and reflect on what’s happened, complain about what’s happened or what hasn’t happened,” Casey said. “We’ve had some small victories here and there and now we got to get a foothold, get some more traction, get more victories and keep moving forward.”
Ryan Restivo wrote the America East conference preview for the 2015-16 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.
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Good article. I would be nice to have Casey comment on what he has remaining at NU and a brief analysis of his new recruits as Maker did in the Marist article. The past is the past , we need Casey to comment on his incoming freshmen class and several juco’s he signed late.
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