Ualbany adds, Siena subtracts
Never made it to MAAC final, over .500 just twice in 9 years
Siena won’t renew the contract of women’s coach Ali Jaques, while reports say Ualbany has a new men’s coach.
“Go Saints.”
Siena women’s basketball coach Ali Jaques ended basically every media interview with those two words during her nine years as head coach.
But though she promoted the program at every opportunity, Jaques was never able to push the Saints back to the top of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.
Finally, Siena ran out of patience and announced Monday it wasn’t renewing her contract, which expires this year. The Saints ended their season with a 63-55 loss to Marist in the quarterfinals of the MAAC Tournament in Atlantic City, N.J., last Wednesday.
“Certainly, I think we want to develop more consistency from the product we put on the court,” Siena athletic director John D’argenio said on a Zoom call with the media. “As I said, there were some good moments. We’d just like to develop more of those good moments.” Jaques directed Siena to the championship game of the Women’s Basketball
Invitational in 2015 and reached the MAAC Tournament semifinals on three occasions. But Siena never reached the championship game and finished over .500 just twice. The Saints weren’t able to break Marist and Quinnipiac’s near-monopoly on the league.
Jaques had a 116-148 overall record and 75-90 in the league since Siena hired her in 2012 to replace longtime head coach Gina Castelli, who is now at Le Moyne. Jaques was previously associate head coach at Northwestern.
Siena said it will start a nationwide search for her replacement. D’argenio said he didn’t have a specific timeline but it would be “ideal” to hire someone within a month. He said he doesn’t plan to use a search firm “at this time.”
“I think somebody that can lead the young women with empathy, somebody that can come in and understand coaching in 2020-21,’’ said D’argenio, asked what he’s looking for in a new coach. “As everybody knows, it’s a lot different than it was even in 2010. Certainly need that. And somebody who’s proven to be successful and won some games, whether that’s as a high-level assistant, whether that’s as a head coach, and of course, somebody that has the values that we have at Siena College as a Franciscan institution.”
D’argenio added he thought Jaques related well to her players.
He has asked Siena assistant and alumnus Megan Donohue to stay on through the transition to a new coach.
Siena went 4-9 this season with several pauses because of positive COVID -19 tests.
“I hope the administration makes the best decision for the best of the program moving forward,” Jaques said after Wednesday’s season-ending loss. “If that’s me, I’ll be grateful. If it’s not, I’ll walk away knowing I gave it everything I had.”
She did not return a text for comment on Monday.
“I think the impact of this year was minimal on the decision,” D’argenio said. “We had a large body of work coming into the year to look at and to evaluate.”
Siena pointed out Jaques’ program posted 100 percent Graduation Success Rates in each of the three most recent NCAA GSR Reports (2018, 2019, 2020), and earned an NCAA Public Recognition Award in 2019 for achieving an academic progress rate (APR) in the top 10 percent of all women’s basketball programs nationally.
Jaques had a base salary of $140,965 in 2018-19, according to Siena’s most recent Form 990 tax documents. She made $195,518 in total compensation, including $22,500 in bonus and incentives.
D’argenio said he thinks the program should be appealing to a candidate with a practice court and new training room and weight room, along with the interest in basketball in the area.
Siena has had only two winning seasons since 2004.
“I think within our league, we’ve got an opportunity to be very good,” D’argenio said.
Just over a week ago, we called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign. Since then, the calls for him to do so have only intensified — most notably from top leaders in his own Democratic Party whose support the governor had cited as a reason for not quitting.
Mr. Cuomo’s response? He refuses to accept the reality that he is, by the day, an increasingly isolated governor. An embattled, imperiled one who is under investigation by the state attorney general and, quite possibly, facing impeachment. And here we thought such chaos might have at least taken a breather with the departure of former President Donald Trump.
Mr. Cuomo is, sadly, borrowing a few pages from Mr. Trump’s script, suggesting that calls for him to resign are “undemocratic,” as if New Yorkers would be disenfranchised if he did the right thing and stepped down and let his duly elected lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul, serve out his term. He wasn’t so concerned for democracy when, 13 years ago this week, another New York governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned over allegations that he’d slept with a prostitute. This governor faces much more consequential accusations — that he and his administration lied for months in a coverup concerning COVID -19 nursing home deaths, and that he sexually harassed multiple women.
It’s Mr. Cuomo who is now railing, Trumplike, about due process and how unfair it all is, rather than addressing the allegations in a truly substantive way.
It’s Mr. Cuomo who’s doing Trumpian loyalty checks, having his vaccine czar, Larry Schwartz, query Democratic county executives on their support, sometimes in the same conversation as discussions about vaccines. The message could hardly be less subtle: Nice county you got here. Be a shame if its people couldn’t get lifesaving shots.
This is not how you convince people you are not a harassing bully.
As for support, Mr. Cuomo has lost it from, to name a few, Sen. Charles Schumer; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand; most of New York’s congressional delegation; enough Democratic members of the Assembly to form a majority with Republicans in an impeachment vote, and, as of late last week, 42 of the 47 state senators needed for an impeachment conviction.
We’re well aware that, in the latest Siena poll, a majority of New Yorkers say Mr. Cuomo should stick it out. We get it. We are still in a scary time, with a pandemic still raging globally and only about 9 percent of New Yorkers fully vaccinated.
We get, too, that New Yorkers are tired of how this feels at times like just one more partisan kerfuffle as Republicans overplay their hand, accusing the governor of heinous crimes and then fundraising off the fake outrage. Outrage, mind you, that they never mustered for Mr. Trump’s proven corruption and outright bragging about sexually abusing women.
But the issue here isn’t Republican hypocrisy. It’s Mr. Cuomo, and the steady erosion of his support and the mandate he needs to govern, not just from the people, but their elected representatives. Mr. Cuomo, capable as he may be, cannot do this job alone. And more and more, with the passing of every day, that is exactly where he finds himself. He needs to resign for the good of the state.