Golden Knights ready for final tourney run
ALBANY — College of Saint Rose women’s basketball coach Will Brown rattled off all the reasons why his team is “a story in itself,” as he put it this week.
The Golden Knights were picked 11th in the preseason in their own league, the Northeast-10 Conference. They had a new head coach, Brown, who had never coached women’s basketball. Saint Rose had only one winning season in the previous 11.
And that was before the Golden Knights found out in late November the school is closing for good at the end of the academic year.
Overcoming all that, Saint Rose (21-6) is the No. 3 seed in the NCAA Division II East Regional that begins Friday at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. The Golden Knights will play No. 6 Daemen (20-7) at noon.
“So I think these kids are winners already, but we can’t just be happy to be part of this because we’re good enough to win the East Region,” said Brown, the longtime Ualbany men’s head coach. “We just don’t have a lot of room for error.”
The Golden Knights will need to play better than they did in their most recent game, a 58-53 loss to Southern Connecticut on March 3 in an NE-10 quarterfinal, the final contest played in Daniel P. Nolan Gymnasium.
“I think it’s definitely going to motivate us,” said sophomore guard Payton Graber, a Schalmont graduate.
“We know what we have to do in that kind of (tournament) atmosphere and we know how to win in tournament games now. That’ll help us in the (NCAA) tournament, trying to figure it out.”
In that defeat, Saint Rose didn’t play its usual suffocating defense. The Golden Knights still lead the nation in Division II scoring defense at 47.5 points per game and fieldgoal percentage defense at 32.3.
“I think we all know that we could have played better and could have played to our full potential,” Saint Rose sophomore guard Kaelah Carter of Shaker High said. “But now we have that second chance to be able to do that and I think we’re going to really use that and make sure we play all 40 minutes all together.”
Carter acknowledged the distraction of the impending closure of the school. Players will have to find new schools when this season is over and are already being contacted by other programs.
“I’ve definitely dealt with it because I’ve had a few phone calls,” she said. “It’s definitely a little stressful, but I have everyone else here and everyone has me, and we still all have each other. … I think that makes it more comfortable for all of us because we know we’re not dealing with this alone.”
To keep their season from ending Friday, the Golden Knights will try to contain Daemen guard Alahna Paige, a 5-foot-4 senior from Rochester who averages 21.9 points per game and shoots 41.2 percent from 3-point range.
“Daemen’s going to present challenges that we haven’t experienced all season long,” Brown said. “They have a dynamic point guard who’s an All-american who can dominate a game by herself and they allow her the freedom to go out and dominate a game.”
Saint Rose is making its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011 and is aiming for its first victory since 1999-2000, when the Golden Knights reached their only Elite Eight.
The winner of Friday’s game will play Saturday in a second-round contest against either No. 2 Assumption or No. 7 Franklin Pierce. Both are NE-10 rivals which Saint Rose has beaten this season. The East Regional championship game is Monday with the winner advancing to the Elite Eight in St. Joseph, Mo.
For almost every team, this time of year is win or go home. For Saint Rose, it’s win or the program is finished forever.
Saint Rose junior guard Syrita Faraj, a Tamarac graduate, wants to go out in the grandest way possible.
“We knew from the beginning this was our potential,” Faraj said. “We want to finish out the season with a national title.”