MARCH MADNESS
COMPLETE COVERAGE OF THE NCAA TOURNAMENT
HOWIE HOOPS PICKS THE BRACKET
Even before the Iona Gaels dream to join UMBC as 16thseeded giant slayers, one of their players already has made some March Madness history.
Rickey McGill is the lone senior on Tim Cluess’ four-peat MAAC champions, making the point guard from Spring Valley, N.Y., the only player in nearly four decades of conference history to appear in the NCAA Tournament four consecutive years when Iona faces topseeded North Carolina on Friday night in Columbus, Ohio.
“It means a lot, it just shows how hard I worked,” McGill, who averages 15.5 points and a team-best 5.0 assists per game, told The Post on Monday. “Coming from not playing at all my freshman year, it just shows how much I care about the game and how I never gave up on myself.”
In fact, after McGill’s disappointing freshman season in 2015-16, in which he appeared in 30 games off the bench but averaged just 2.8 points and 10 minutes per appearance, Iona coach Tim Cluess strongly suggested that he should transfer from the New Rochelle school.
“That’s definitely a true story. He told me those exact words. ‘You’re never gonna play here, you don’t work hard enough,’ ” McGill recalled. “That just gave me the fuel to motivate myself and go harder. I’ll never settle for nothing.”
Cluess says McGill immediately gave the answer the coaching staff wanted to hear, and he rededicated himself both on and off the court, working to improve his body, his outside shot and his decision-making as a point guard.
“A lot of times, we use that as a challenge to someone to find out what they’re really about and how much they really care to become better and see how dedicated they are,” Cluess said. “We brought Rickey in, we wanted to see what he was really about and we were hopeful that he would give us the right answer.
“He gave us the answer we wanted. ‘I want to be here and I’m going to prove that I belong here and want to become a much bbetter player here.’ ”
McGill has started 1100 of his 101 games since the start of his sophomore year, improving his scoring totals from 2.8 points per game as a freshman to 10.5 to 13.4 to 15.5 as a senior. He even was named MVP of the MAAC Tournament — as Iona became the first team in conference history to win four straight titles — and first-team all-conference for the first time.
“Just a blessing, just showing everybody how I never gave up, how I always went harder every chance I got,” McGill said.
McGill also never gave up on this year’s Gaels, who opened the season 2-9 and 7-15 before rattling off 10 straight wins to capture the regular-season conference crown and their fourth straight automatic bid to the tournament.
One year after losing to Duke in the Big Dance, Iona draws mighty North Carolina in a Midwest Region game with an eye on shocking the Tar Heels — just like 16th-seeded Maryland-Baltimore County did to No. 1 Virginia last spring.
“Just go out there and don’t fear nothing, just play basketball. They gotta put on their shoes just like we have to put on our shoes,” McGill said. “We definitely got the mindset of how UMBC played last year. We’re just gonna try and come out and play Iona basketball and pull an upset. We already watched a little bit of [the UMBC game], so we have to keep working in practice and be ready for Carolina and go for it.”
Even if Iona falls short, McGill already has made some improbable history of his own.
“To ta ke somebody who wasn’t a stud coming in, admittedly didn’t work hard enough at his game, a peripheral player as a freshman,” Cluess said, “to do this, is incredible.”