Twenty days ago at Madison Square Garden Iona handed Siena its worst ever Division I conference loss, 95-59. Five minutes into Monday night’s game in Albany the Gaels looked to be well on their way to a similar result up 20-2, but the end result was anything but what they expected. Siena clawed back and pulled out a 65-62 win to send Iona into a three-way tie atop the MAAC with Loyola (MD) and Manhattan at 7-2.
Continue reading “Iona loses 18-point lead in loss to Siena”
The “No Fun League” is back again.
Siena (6-8) is a MAAC school located in Albany, New York. The Saints have had a decent season thus far but had the misfortune of scheduling their game against Niagara (6-10) right at 1 p.m.
What’s 1 p.m. on Sunday in October through January? Football time. Four weeks ago as the Giants lost to the Redskins it didn’t seem like it would matter. There wasn’t going to be a local team in the playoffs.
All of a sudden, after beating the Jets and Cowboys on back-to-back weeks, the Giants are miraculously in the playoffs again and in the premiere Sunday time slot. (Because they’re the Giants.) Siena knew it had a big conflict. Sure, junior O.D. Anisoke is going for a school record 11th straight double-double, but that’s not going to compete with Eli Manning vs. Matt Ryan and Giants vs. Falcons on a Sunday afternoon.
That is until the Saints’ athletic department came up with a creative solution. Offer to show the Giants’ playoff game on the scoreboard during their game. This would be so cool for a number of reasons.
It seems like the perfect plan. Fans could watch both; feel the success and heartbreak of both. (I can just imagine a random cheer coming from the crowd during a media timeout as Victor Cruz broke for a long touchdown.)
And this morning NFL executives killed the idea. Apparently the possibility of about 6,500 fans (Siena’s average home attendance) enjoying a football game together is in violation of the NFL’s copyright policy. Showing the game on a screen bigger than one in someone’s home is a no-no.
Something around 25% of all people in the New York City market, the largest in the nation, are going to be watching the Giants play on Sunday, but the NFL couldn’t allow 6,500 fans to watch the game together in Albany?
Apparently not. Siena even had a conference call with the NFL office to straighten this mess out. But the college’s director of athletics John D’Argenio was told that the NFL just doesn’t grant permission for this type of thing. D’Argenio told Mark Singelais of the Albany Times Union, “At the end of the day, I made a rookie mistake, and I’m not a rookie.”
Was trying to energize a fan base for a mid-January basketball game when sitting slightly below .500 that bad of an idea? And is it such a bad precedent for the NFL to set? I doubt many teams would’ve even been creative enough or aware enough of their fan base to come up with a solution like this. Plus, I highly doubt Siena was going to fill the 8,065 seat Times Union Center because it was showing the Giants game on TV.
All it would’ve done was engender a bit of goodwill and let fans enjoy both of their January loves, college basketball and playoff football on a Sunday afternoon.
Creative thinking? Paying attention to your fan base? Not allowed if it involves the “No Fun League.”
Sean Armand might want to play all of Iona’s games at Madison Square Garden after the show he put on at MSG on Tuesday night against Siena in the Gaels’ 95-59 victory. But it didn’t come without a little bit of extra preparation.
Armand scored a career-high 32 points and hit a school and MAAC record 10 threes as Iona ran all over the Saints in its return to MAAC action. One game after the team shot 6-18 from three during a disappointing 83-75 loss at Hofstra, Armand came back and hit that many threes during the first half for the Gaels.
The Iona sophomore came in early and did some extra shooting before the game to get ready for the big lights of MSG. It paid off.
“I came in a little extra early to get shots up and routine stuff,” Armand said. “Tonight I hit more than usual and I’m happy about it. … My friends and my family are here and at Madison Square Garden there’s no better place to do that.”
With Armand providing the offensive firepower, Iona had no problem showing the 9,528 in attendance for the double-header along with Louisville’s 73-58 victory over St. John’s why it is considered the favorite this season in the MAAC. Even after Loyola (Md.) and Manhattan lost on Monday, the Gaels showed up focused and ready ready to dominate.
Unlike the game against Hofstra where Dwan McMillan, turnovers and poor shooting help thwart Iona’s high-octane attack, the Gaels were able to consistently get out on the break against the Saints. Scott Machado finished with nine points, nine assists and nine rebounds for Iona and his running mate the backcourt, Momo Jones, went for 14 points and seven assists.
“I hate losing and I hate losing the way we lost,” said Iona head coach Tim Cluess about the Hofstra game. “I can understand it if we competed and they beat us great. Now they played very well, but we didn’t compete for half a game. We made uncharacteristic mistakes and we got selfish. So tonight to see that passing and the effort back were the two most important things.”
The Gaels have another high-profile conference game on Friday when they take on Niagara at home on ESPNU at 9 p.m. Niagara dominated the first half against Loyola (Md.) on Monday on the way to a surprising 66-61 victory on the road at Reitz Arena.
Iona controlled the first half against Siena on Tuesday. The Gaels started out on fire and built up a big lead thanks to impressive three-point shooting. The hot hand was passed from Jones to Jermel Jenkins to Armand during the first 20 minutes. Jones and Jenkins each hit three in the first 20 minutes and scored in double-figures before halftime. Armand led the team with 20 points in the first 20 minutes and led Iona to a 57-31 lead at the break.
O.D. Anosike grabbed 10 rebounds for the Saints in the first half. He also scored six points, but picked up three fouls while battling with Mike Glover and the surprisingly active Randy Dezouvre in the first half.
For the game Anosike, who called Siena the “Cadillac program” of the MAAC earlier in the week finished with a double-double of 12 points and 13 rebounds. Evan Hymes led the Saints with 22 points.
Notes: Kyle Smyth started the game for Iona, but Armand started the second half after his scoring outburst in the first… Hymes is one of the fastest players I’ve ever seen in person… Iona is now 9-2 in MAAC regular season games at neutral sites… The Gaels are now 51-46 (52.6%) all-time against Siena… Glover scored 10 points for Iona, his second lowest total of the season… Jermel Jenkins came off the bench to score 16 points for the Gaels.
Iona and Siena are the second half of a special double-header tonight. First St. John’s and Louisville take to the hardwood and then the Gaels and Saints play.
Continue reading “Looking at the numbers for Iona and Siena”
Much like I did for the Big East, I ran 10,000 simulations for the MAAC (and a bunch of other conferences coming up in this series this week). The MAAC is a slightly different animal because it played conference games already this season. Four teams: Iona, Fairfield, Loyola (Md.) and Manhattan are ahead of schedule at 2-0. Four teams: Siena, Rider, Niagara and Canisius are behind at 0-2. (Marist and St. Peter’s are stuck in the middle, we’ll see why that’s important in a second.) All of this means that the simulations have to take this into account. It’d be really tough for one of those four bottom teams to take the league title away from one of the top four teams, but as you’ll see, it happened twice.
Ryan over at SienaSaintsBlog asked me to look at some similarities for Rakeem Brookins. He put together a really cool post that takes a wide look at the possibilities and includes information from both Ken Pomeroy and myself. It’s definitely worth taking a look at.
I was invited to give some opinions about the upcoming MAAC season at the Siena Saints Blog. Go check it out. Includes some commentary about Siena, but also Iona, Fairfield and conference tiers.
Khalil Dukes is one of the hottest names in the recruiting circles around New York City. He just finished his sophomore season, but now that coaches are officially allowed to contact recruits in the 2013 class he got a number of phone calls on June 15, including from a number of New York schools.
It’s not often you get fired and actually end up coaching a better team, but that’s exactly what happened to Paul Hewitt. After finishing 13-18 (5-11 in the ACC) Hewitt was relieved of his duties at Georgia Tech. Still, he managed to land on his feet with a sweet gig at George Mason after Jim Larranaga left for Miami.
Hewitt was known at Tech for underachieving teams. It might seem odd then that he was chosen to lead a Patriots team that is expected to be in the Top 25 in the nation next season.
NYC Buckets Archive 