Rider back at practice, preparing for weekend set at Quinnipiac
The last time the Rider men’s basketball team was on the court in a competitive game was nearly one month ago.
In the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference — perhaps the league hit hardest on any by COVID-related pauses — that’s been the nature of the season.
“I’m just taking it and rolling with the punches,” coach Kevin Baggett said. “There’s no sense of complaining (because) everybody in our league is going through it. Last week there were four teams at one time that were all shut down.”
The Broncs are scheduled to resume their season this weekend with a two-game set at Quinnipiac. Rider joined Siena, Niagara and
Marist as teams to hit pause during the first week of February.
The team returned to full activities last Friday.
“We had been going for a good while before we had a pause and I thought our guys did a really good job in terms of their conditioning,” the ninth-year coach said. “We had (exercise) bikes for them to ride to keep their cardio up. It took a day or two for those guys to get their wind back and legs underneath them.”
Baggett said this quarantine was easier for players to manage than the first one, which took place back in mid-October and forced the cancellation of the first three games. Players were also able to take part in individual workouts in the practice gym.
“Everybody was smiling, laughing, ready to go and glad to be back to what we were doing,” Baggett said. “This is really a good group of guys, who enjoy one another. It was good to see everybody, good to get back on the same page and get working for this weekend coming up.”
Teams must play 13 games in order to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Rider (411, 4-8) has already reached that threshold with 15 games on its resume. The MAAC is using a team’s number of conference victories as the first tiebreaker since all 11 schools won’t fulfill the 20-game league schedule.
As that stands, the Broncs are in 10th place, ahead of only this weekend’s opponent.
“I’ve not paid any attention to it at all,” Baggett said. “I’m just getting us prepared for Quinnipiac. That’s the way we’ve been all year long. To look down the road, you may not even be playing. It’s just a matter of day to day and looking forward to the next game.”