Saints win in opening thriller
Siena rallies late in long-awaited opener
With no fans on hand at the Saints’ long-awaited opener, Siena rallies for a 78-77 victory over Monmouth.
The Siena men’s basketball team, playing its first game in 298 days because of the coronavirus pandemic, showed very little rust and wasted no time reminding everyone who’s the favorite to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
Kyle Young ’s dunk on a Jalen Pickett pass with 1:02 left gave the Saints the lead for good in their season-opening 78-77 victory over Monmouth on Sunday afternoon with no fans in the Alumni Recreation Center.
“I’m always going to talk about not making excuses,” Siena coach Carmen Maciariello said. “That’s how we live our lives, regardless of on the court or not. You’ve got to deal the hand you’re dealt and you’ve got to make the most of your situation. We come out and we play Siena basketball.”
Pickett, the reigning MAAC Player of the Year, had 20 points, six rebounds and six assists as the Saints prevailed in their first game since a MAAC quarterfinal win over Manhattan on March 11, before the remainder of last season was canceled by coronavirus.
Siena had three 14-day pauses because of positive COVID -19 tests that prevented them from playing until Sunday, but it didn’t keep the Saints from beating Monmouth (3-3 overall, 3-2 MAAC), which had blown out Canisius on Sunday and Monday.
“We’re a new team, a lot of new faces out there,” Pickett said. “So we wanted to go out there and show that we can compete at the highest level. Monmouth’s done a great job in the first couple weeks of MAAC play, we knew they ’re probably top of the conference. So we wanted to go out there and give it our all and everybody had a good level of emotion and en
thusiasm.”
Siena won its 11th straight game dating to last season.
The Saints played in the ARC with their regular home court, Times Union Center, not allowed by the state to open with fans. Instead, Siena played its first regular-season game on campus since 1997, with cardboard cutouts of fans behind them.
“It kind of feels like a scrimmage, but we know that it’s a real game, so we have to bring the intensity,” Siena senior guard Nick Hopkins said. “We had our bench cheering, having that camaraderie, so I feel like we did good.”
Young had 15 points and 10 rebounds and Hopkins had 14 points, including 4-of-7 3-point shooting, in his first game since transferring from Belmont. Senior guard/forward Manny Camper had 12 points and eight rebounds despite 3-for-16 shooting.
Siena won despite playing without freshman guard Aidan Carpenter, out with a minor injury, and freshman forward Colin Golson, out because he hasn’t cleared COVID -19 protocols.
Maciariello said he doesn’t know if he’ll have Carpenter or Golson when the Saints and Hawks will play again at 5 p.m. Monday.
On Sunday, Monmouth took a 66-62 lead when George Papas
scored on a fast-break layup with 5:16 to play, but Siena surged back ahead 67-66 on Young ’s put-back and a Hopkins 3-pointer off a Pickett assist.
The teams traded leads until Young put Siena up 74-73 with the slam off the Pickett pass.
“Coach Carm did a great job of calling out a play,” Pickett said. “We knew eventually they were going to try to deny me the ball, so we ran a play where Kyle caught it did a great job flipping it to me and we just kept telling him to roll pretty hard to the rim.”
Down 77-74, Monmouth’s Deion Hammond missed a pair of 3-pointers for the tie in the final 10 seconds.
Siena was able to slow the pace against enough against Monmouth, which ranked seventh in the country in adjusted tempo entering the game.
“Those guys had to realize I kept telling them, ‘Listen, we’ve got to keep this thing at our pace,’ ” Maciariello said. “I was trying to slow them down and put the brakes on certain possessions. Ideally, when we’ve got a little more bodies and we’re in better shape, we can get that thing going up and down, how we played last year.”
Young, looking at 24 hours of rest before Monday’s rematch, said the Saints aren’t content with a split.
“We’ve still got to work hard,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”