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Iona University men's basketball head coach Dan Geriot runs a practice at Hynes Athletic Center in New Rochelle Nov. 3, 2025. | Peter Carr/The Journal News / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The buzzer wasn’t the only sound that went off as the final seconds of Iona’s season ticked off the clock in a first-round MAAC Tournament loss to Sacred Heart on Thursday, March 5.
You had to cover your ears to avoid the loud growl and roar of the elephant that had invaded every single room that Iona had played in during Dan Geriot’s first season as head coach.
Geriot fell drastically short of the nigh-obnoxiously high standards the University set for the program when it fired Tobin Anderson less than 48 hours after the squad lost in the MAAC Championship Game last year. Anderson’s replacement wasn’t a readymade, known commodity with a history of winning as a head coach, but a 37-year-old first-time head coach in Geriot. This season was incredibly valuable as a learning experience for the former NBA assistant coach, but that’s not why you come to Iona.
“There were moments this year where I dropped the ball,” Geriot said. “I feel pretty comfortable where I’m growing and where I’m going. I really think this team in particular deserves me in my second year. You’ve gotta grow from it.”
How does Geriot feel about the conundrum between the two factors?
“I love it. (The expectations are) why I took the job,” Geriot told Mid-Major Madness after Iona’s season-ending loss. “I think the high-standard learning experience, I gotta do it faster. That’s the NBA background and that’s where I think we’re gonna do it faster. I truly believe 18 wins in my first year, that’s not good enough. And I gotta do a better job, and we will.”
“The learning experience, unfortunately, is that I wasn’t in college for the last ten years.”
His process-oriented approach, which emphasizes “failing correctly,” is about building something sustainable through consistent habits, whether over the course of an individual season, or over the course of a long-term coaching tenure.
Geriot discussed where things went awry after a strong start to the season in non-conference play.
“We did it so well,” he said. “And then the MAAC shifted us to where we had to fail correctly, but it was different. And to me, that’s the hard part of understanding how to build the team now as we go forward. Man, we were playing such at a high clip through January, even after Marist. We kind of changed how we’re going to play, and I think it was beneficial for us, but losing Keshawn (Williams) makes you fail differently. And that’s what I really have to evaluate. How correct was that, and that’ll go into the roster build for next spring.”
Speaking of the roster build, with a year in the MAAC, he has a better idea of how he wants his team to look.
“We’re going to be shaped differently, I think you’ll see more size, maybe a little bit more wings,” Geriot said. “As you’ve seen, some of our commits that are coming in, and I think that’s a big thing of where we’re headed. Continuing to recruit our shooting, our versatility being able to do some different things more often.”
“When you have 13 roster spots, we took a lot of guards that we needed to feel out with the experience,” Geriot added afterwards. “And they needed to go through it. And to me, that took up maybe some frontcourt depth, maybe some wing depth. You don’t really understand exactly what you have until you’re in it with the system. And I think that’s where to me, it’s not too many question marks, but in a sense, there was too much versatility going on.”
Geriot’s hire came with an undercurrent of belief in the commitment that Iona would make to the program. But after a year in which the Gaels finished 8th in the conference and exited Atlantic City early, how did Geriot feel about the support he had in helping him expedite the process of growth?
“I think the belief behind what we’re doing and what the pre-requisites were for this year, we achieved those,” Geriot said. “I believe that commitments continuing to be with us, be with our group, be with our ideas, and our program, and that’s where I love our president, our athletic director, and our board of trustees. They really believe in what we’re doing, and I think that’s the good part. 18 wins was a great start, but I’m with them, it’s not good enough. And it’s something that we got to continue to have an uptick in.”
There were signs throughout the year that Iona could be building something. A 4-0 start, a win over Siena early in conference play, hanging on to beat Saint Peter’s in overtime and playing Merrimack close twice, including a win.
But in New Rochelle, that’s not enough. Now that Anderson has been named the head coach at Tennessee Tech, there will surely be comparisons of how his team is playing to Geriot’s, and the Gaels need to take steps forward in year two.
It’ll be very hard to replace CJ Anthony and Lamin Sabally, but Iona has a fascinating recruiting class coming in, featuring Max Moshinski from Father Judge, and two international prospects in Panagiotis Lefas and Oliver Sassella. Perhaps the Gaels can also return Luke Jungers, Denver Anglin, Alliou Fall and Kosy Akametu, but that’s not the end of the story.
How Geriot and his staff – which is now down Ronald Ramon, who returned to his alma mater of Pittsburgh – handles the offseason with a year of experience in the league will be examined under a microscope. How they handle the grind of the next season will be even more interesting to watch.
We shall see what is in store for the Gaels. But everybody inside and outside of the program agrees that it has to be better than this.
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