Rider credits togetherness for winning streak
The Rider men’s basketball team had just completed a seventh straight win and moved it into first place in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference when coach Kevin Baggett was posed the question. “What has changed?” “I needed to adjust because sometimes I get on these guys too much,” Baggett said. “I needed to pull back and trust them just as they trust me, and we just needed to come together. We needed to defend better. Once we started defending better, we always talked about having enough scoring punch, and I thought these guys really started locking in.”
This group’s togetherness is one of those intangibles that can’t be measured on a stat sheet or seen on a graph. You have to be there to really understand it.
It’s why the Broncs were able to start this win streak by rallying from an 18-point secondhalf deficit against Iona in a building where they rarely ever win and the host had a 21game winning streak. Or how the bench was able to come in after a slow start at Marist and whittle a 14-point deficit down to one by halftime. Or when they just hung around at Fairfield and won in overtime after Allen Powell tied the game at the buzzer.
And it was there last Sunday when they fought off a Manhattan run midway through the second half and scored an 11-point road victory over a team that had just knocked off league-leading Siena in overtime two nights prior.
Baggett credited that to the work the players have done in film sessions, which he calls the classroom.
“We just got better, and — the togetherness, the communication — everything we do is together,” he said. “This group is together more than any team I’ve ever had.”
During this seven-game streak, Rider has not allowed an opponent to score 70 points and is posting some of its best defensive marks under Baggett. Opposition is averaging 61.7 points and shooting 39.3% overall and 33.7% on 3-pointers. While the Broncs are allowed 66.4 points over the 22 games they have played, the 61.7 mark in the last seven would rank in the top-20 nationally.
Additionally, in 13 MAAC games, Rider leads the league with a 5.8 rebounding margin.
It dominated on the glass last time out by out-boarding Manhattan, 44-27, including 12 on the offensive glass that led to a 17-5 advantage in secondchance points.
Add all up and you get a seven-game winning streak and sole possession of first place in the MAAC. The Broncs (13-9, 10-3) actually control their own destiny to the No. 1 seed with seven games to go, but there’s still plenty of basketball to be played between now and the league tournament in
Atlantic City, beginning on Friday night against Fairfield (1013, 6-7) in a nationally televised game (7 p.m., ESPNU).
“I think guys have played more like we did during the playoffs last year,” graduate center Ajiri Ogemuno-Johnson said. “I think the maturity of it is guys recognizing exactly the team that we have, so I think me, DJ, the core guys, are bringing everybody in. I think they’re buying in too, so that’s what’s really been helping us so far.”