ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — Two buses carried Siena students wearing gold Saints T-shirts. Some of them have ditched those T-shirts in favor of body paint. Many other Siena fans throughout the Promenade hall were chanting “Let’s go Saints” to make their voices heard.
Confetti flew and Baloo sat patiently in front of the camera as Siena huddled around the MAAC championship trophy.
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This is what Siena basketball should be like. This is what Siena basketball should feel like.
Thanks to this team, this is Siena basketball tonight.
The Saints led Merrimack by 15 points in the first half, hitting a couple of 3-pointers in the opening half, then built a 12-point halftime lead after the Warriors tied it to three at halftime. While Merrimack never left, Siena made enough plays down the stretch to cement a 64-54 victory and put their name on the MAAC championship trophy for the seventh time and first in 16 years.
“That’s why I wanted a job like this,” Gerry McNamara said. “Because I love the fact that there are expectations. Because there are expectations, you should have the support. People come to the games, great arena, great facilities, great campus. But that’s how we want it to be ideally.”
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Two years ago, McNamara replaced alumnus Carm Maciariello after a 4-28 season. Maciariello was fired after just one losing season in conference play. If you’re going to make this move, you’d better replace him with a winner, and that’s what Siena did.
This is not a story about a program coming from scratch. Siena has everything it takes to succeed in the mid-level league, including financial support, institutional support and especially the support of the fan base, so this is a story of returning to the expectations that this program has always had and always will have.
Their fans reminded them of that.
“It’s almost like a movie,” McNamara said. “I said ‘Look what you’ve created, this environment because of the way you play and how you put yourself in a position to win’.”
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Siena fans have long been contentious about the game being played in Atlantic City instead of Albany. One of the main counterarguments from other fans is that Albany gives the Saints home-field advantage.
Anyway, they have it on the boardwalk.
“That was awesome,” Riley Mulvey said. “Being five hours from home basically gives you home field advantage.”
Mulvey is one of two rotation players on the 518 team. A native of Rotterdam, he played his first four seasons of college basketball at Iowa State for former Siena coach Fran McCaffery.
He and Niskayuna’s Brendan Coyle represent the region and fan base that make Siena unique among MAAC schools. They grew up with the Saints but didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Saints play in the NCAA tournament.
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Now, they have done it themselves.
“Definitely (it feels like completing something unfinished by the guys I watched growing up). Walking through it and seeing a lot of talented people,” Coyle told Intermediate madness. “This is the first time in 16 years, so it’s great to be able to do it with this team.
No one cares anymore that Coyle shot 29 percent from 3-point range during the regular season. At the beginning of the game, he made two shots on Siena’s run, which was enough to get the job done in terms of three-point shooting percentage.
“You still get goosebumps when the clock hits zero,” Coyle added. “You’ll see Siena gain more points in the table, which is fantastic.”
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While Mulvey and Justise Shortz spoke in the postgame press conference, McNamara and superstar linebacker Gavin Doty kept talking to each other on the microphone. It symbolizes the relationship between two basketball-obsessed madmen. One was from Scranton, Pa., who was well-known in Syracuse, and the other was from the central New York town of Fulton, just outside Syracuse.
On Tuesday, Doty scored a game-high 23 points. None were bigger than a step-back 3-pointer with just over two minutes to play. That’s not his shot. His shot is what McNamara calls an automatic spin fade shot. But he knew he had to make some plays for Siena to win this game.
“I knew the game time was coming to an end,” Doty said. “I need to make a big play. It feels like if we hit a three there, it could end the game. We got some momentum from that. Just let it fly. I’m confident. I try to stay forward on my shots – GMac always tells me to lean forward and when I do that, I’m a really good shooter.”
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To McNamara, Doty was simply the clutch king who roamed the Kelly Dome backfield two decades ago. While Doty may not be a point guard like McNamara, he has the same killer instinct, and now, he has the hardware to back it up.
“Gavin Doty is probably the closest person to anyone I’ve ever coached,” McNamara said. “It’s like he’s a psycho. Absolutely insane competitor.”
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Assistant coach Ben Lee is a scout for the Saints and is tasked with finding ways to guard Kevair Kennedy, the MAAC Player of the Year. In Siena’s final game against Merrimack, Kennedy scored a career-high 32 points, including 16 free throw attempts and made all 16 of his attempts.
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Shortz fouled out in just 11 minutes, not only his lowest minutes of the season, but also the lowest of his Siena career. This can’t happen on Tuesday. They need Shortz to run the offense. They needed more size to deal with Kennedy.
“I think Marist did some work against him,” Lee told Intermediate madness. “He’s only 15 feet tall. Francis is an elite defender, so with his length and physicality, I think that’s what’s best for us. We have to keep him up front, and I believe Francis Fowler can guard anybody at any position.”
He also likes that it gives them the opportunity to have Shorts guard Tye Dorsett and Doty guard Ernest Shelton, but the matchup almost scares Kennedy a little bit.
Fullerfalk asked Kennedy to shoot from a 15-foot screen, which he did, but also left him thinking about his drive.
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“I think we’re overthinking it,” Gallo told Intermediate madness. “I guess (it made him a little weird).”
When Lee brought it up in the writers’ room, other staff members resonated. Assistant coaches Arinze Onuaku and Ryan Blackwell, as well as Brian Beaury and Ryan Beaury, all agree that’s the way the game is played.
“In these conversations, we have full confidence in Francis Fowler,” McNamara said. “The more we talk about it, the smoother everything else goes.”
“When coach told me I was going to guard the Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year,” Fowlerfake told Intermediate madness. “There’s nothing more I want. It’s just that it’s my freshman year and I hope he has a rough night.”
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He did have a rough night, shooting 5-for-18 from the field and only attempting four free throws. It was a brutal way to end Kennedy’s season, but the Saints did a great job of identifying the matchup advantage and attacking it.
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McNamara has won championships before. He doesn’t look at it any differently than he did the NCAA Tournament when he was a player or assistant coach, just because he’s doing it now as a head coach.
He thinks about what it means for his team and the community.
“To me, the reward is how those kids feel,” McNamara said. “I’m thinking about how I feel when I achieve that as a player, and that’s probably why I’m still chasing it.”
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But to win a title in Siena, with two hometown kids, in front of a pretend hometown crowd, that’s why he did it.
“I’m here to prove myself that I can win at a high level,” McNamara said. “And I found the right people to compete with to be as competitive as I needed to be to win something.”
