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Siena celebrates winning a seventh MAAC Championship | Sam Federman / Mid-Major Madness
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Two busloads of Siena students dressed in gold Saints t-shirts. A few of them have discarded those t-shirts in favor of body paint. The many other Siena fans throughout Boardwalk Hall are chanting “Let’s Go Saints,” making their voice heard.
The confetti flying, Baloo sitting patiently in front of the camera, the Siena team huddled around a MAAC Championship trophy.
This is what Siena basketball is supposed to look like. This is what Siena basketball is supposed to feel like.
And thanks to this team, it’s what Siena basketball is on this night.
The Saints jumped out to a 15-point first-half lead on Merrimack, draining a few early threes to go on a run, and then went on a 12-point run coming out of halftime after the Warriors cut it to three at the break. While Merrimack never went away, Siena made enough plays late, and cemented a 64-54 win to write their name onto the MAAC Championship trophy for the seventh time, and the first in 16 years.
“This is why I wanted a job like this,” Gerry McNamara said. “Because I love the fact that there’s an expectation. Because there’s an expectation, you should have support. People coming to the games, great arena, great facilities, great campus. But this is ideally what we wanted it to look like.”
Two years ago, McNamara replaced alumnus Carm Maciariello following a 4-28 season. Maciariello’s firing came after just one losing season in conference play. If you’re going to make that move, you’d better replace him with a winner, and Siena did just that.
It’s not a story of a program being lifted up from nothing. Siena has everything it takes to succeed at the mid-major level in terms of financial support, institutional support, and especially the support of a fanbase, so this is a story of a return to what the expectation of the program has always been, and always will be.
And their fans reminded them of that.
“It’s almost like the movies,” McNamara said. “I said ‘look what you’ve created, this environment is because of the way you play and how you put yourself in position to win’.”
Siena fans have long bickered with the tournament being in Atlantic City rather than in Albany. One of the main retorts from other fanbases is that Albany provides the Saints with a home court advantage.
They had that on the Boardwalk anyway.
“That was really awesome,” Riley Mulvey said. “Being able to basically have a home court advantage five hours away from home.”
Mulvey is one of two rotation players from the 518. He’s a Rotterdam native who played his first four seasons of college basketball for former Siena coach Fran McCaffery at Iowa.
He and Niskayuna’s Brendan Coyle represent the region and fanbase that makes Siena unique amongst the MAAC schools. They grew up with the Saints but didn’t get to watch Saints teams that made the NCAA Tournament.
Now, they have gone and done it themselves.
“Absolutely (it felt like finishing unfinished business from the guys I watched growing up). Coming through, watching a lot of talented guys,” Coyle told Mid-Major Madness. “It’s the first one in 16 years, so it’s amazing to be able to do it with this group.
Nobody cares anymore that Coyle shot 29% from three in the regular season. He made two shots during Siena’s run in the beginning of the game, and it was enough in terms of three-point shooting to get the job done.
“You get goosebumps thinking about it still, but when that clock hits zero,” Coyle added. “And you see Siena’s got more points on the board, it’s amazing.”
—
While Mulvey and Justice Shoats spoke during the postgame press conference, McNamara and superstar guard Gavin Doty kept talking to each other underneath the microphones. It’s symbolic of a relationship between two basketball-obsessed nuts. One from Scranton, Pennsyvlania who made his name known in Syracuse, and the other from just outside Syracuse in the Central New York town of Fulton.
Doty scored a game-high 23 points on Tuesday. None were bigger than the stepback three with just over two minutes on the clock. That’s not his shot. His shot is the spinning fadeaway that McNamara calls automatic. But he knew that for Siena to win this game, he’d have to make some plays.
“I knew the shot clock was winding down,” Doty said. “I needed to make a big play. Felt like if we hit a three right there, it could kind of close the game away. We got some momentum off of that. Just let it fly. I was confident. I tried staying forward in my shot – GMac always tells me to lean forward and that I’m a really good shooter when I do that.”
For McNamara, Doty is a spitting image of the clutch king that roamed the backcourt of the Carrier Dome two decades ago. While he may not be a point guard like McNamara was, Doty possesses that same killer instinct, and now, has the hardware to back it up.
“Gavin Doty is probably as close to me as anybody I’ve ever coached,” McNamara said. “In terms of like he’s a psycho. Absolute maniac competitor.”
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Assistant coach Ben Lee had the scout for the Saints, and was tasked with finding a way to guard MAAC Player of the Year Kevair Kennedy. In Siena’s last meeting with Merrimack, Kennedy went off for a career-high 32 points, including getting to the line 16 times and making all 16 free throws.
Shoats fouled out in just 11 minutes, by far his lowest minute total of not just the season, but of his Siena career. That couldn’t happen on Tuesday. They needed Shoats running the offense. And they needed more size on Kennedy.
“I think Marist did a little bit in terms of playing off of him,” Lee told Mid-Major Madness. “He’s a handful 15 feet and in. Francis is an elite elite defender, so his length and physicality, I thought that was the best look for us. We had to keep him in front, I trust Francis Folefac guarding anyone at any position.”
He also liked that it gave them the opportunity to have Shoats guard Tye Dorset and Doty guard Ernest Shelton, but the matchup almost spooked Kennedy a little bit.
Folefac was going under screens at 15 feet, begging Kennedy to shoot, which he did, but also making him think about his drives.
“I think we were overthinking it,” Gallo told Mid-Major Madness. “I think (it geeked him out a little bit).”
In the writers room when Lee brought it up, something clicked with the rest of the staff. Assistant coaches Arinze Onuaku and Ryan Blackwell, along with Brian and Ryan Beaury, agreed that that was the way to play.
“In those conversations, we have a great deal of confidence in Francis Folefac,” McNamara said. “The more we discussed it, the more everything else fell into place.”
“When coach told me I’d be guarding the Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year,” Folefac told Mid-Major Madness. “There wasn’t anything I wanted more. Just this being my freshman year too, I wanted him to have a hard night.”
He did have a hard night, going just 5-18 from the field and only attempting four free throws. A cruel way for Kennedy’s season to end, but a terrific job by the Saints to identify the matchup advantage and attack it.
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McNamara has won championships before. He’s not thinking about this any differently from the NCAA Tournaments that he made as a player or assistant coach just because he’s done it now as a head coach.
He thinks about what this means for his group and what it means for his community.
“The reward for me is the feeling those kids have,” McNamara said. “I’m thinking about how I felt when I accomplished it as a player, and that’s probably why I still chase it.”
But to win it at Siena, with two hometown kids, in front of a pseudo home crowd, that’s why he does it.
“I was coming here to prove myself that I could win at a high level,” McNamara said. “And I got the right guys to compete at the leve it takes to be competitive to try to win something.”
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