Ex-siena coach shocked by ‘Cinderella season’
Anderson’s Knights playing for Sweet 16 berth after upset
Former Siena men’s basketball assistant coach Tobin Anderson brought his new team to Loudonville for a closed scrimmage last October.
Hired in May by Fairleigh Dickinson, Anderson got his first chance to be a Division I head coach, taking over a Knights program that went 4-22 last season. When he scheduled the scrimmage against Siena, it gave him a chance to see what he had against a solid Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference team, led by Saints coach Carmen Maciariello.
It wasn’t pretty, according to Anderson.
“We had a long ways to go,” Anderson said. “I told Carm, ‘We should be OK, but we have a long ways to go.’ We got beat around pretty good by Siena and I thought to myself, ‘This is going to be a struggle. We’re going to have our ups and downs. There’s a lot of work to do and we’ll get better.’ But never fathomed we’d be doing what we’re doing now.”
Anderson spoke by phone Sunday morning from Columbus, Ohio, where Cinderella FDU was getting ready to play Florida Atlantic at 7:45 p.m. in an NCAA Tournament second-round game for a spot in the Sweet 16 in Madison Square Garden — just 15 miles from FDU’S Hackensack, N.J., campus.
The 16th-seeded Knights (21-15) of the lightly regarded Northeast Conference shocked the college basketball world on Friday, beating the Big Ten’s Purdue 63-58 in a first-round contest to become only the second No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1.
“It’s amazing,” Anderson said. “It’s awesome. This season wasn’t like a smooth ride. We had a lot of ups and downs. Obviously, you’re building a program, so you’re kind of starting from scratch a little bit, so to get here and beat Purdue and get the chance to play (Sunday) and go to the Sweet 16, it’s beyond our wildest dreams.”
Anderson spent 2011 to 2013 at Siena under thenhead coach Mitch Buonaguro, who lobbied hard to hire Anderson, a successful Division III head coach for 12 seasons at Clarkson and Hamilton.
The Siena staff was fired after going 8-24 in the 2012-13 season.
Anderson, an Iowa native, went on to a highly successful tenure at Division II St. Thomas Aquinas in Sparkill, Rockland County. Though it didn’t end well at Siena, he said his stint there helped him.
“Going to Siena made me a much better coach,” Anderson said. “Going and being an assistant at that time in my life, I’d been a head coach for 12 years, gave me a chance to just step away and look back and kind of say to myself, ‘OK, here’s some mistakes I’ve kind of been making as a head coach. Here’s some things I can be better at. Even us not having the success, it just showed me what I can do better. Also being at Siena, we were kind of in a fishbowl. There’s a lot of scrutiny on what you’re doing. It helped me understand how the process works sometimes. You can’t get frustrated with the outside noise and the outside influences.
You’ve just got to take care of your program, what you can take care of.”
Anderson has former Siena women’s assistant Jack Castleberry (2012-14) on his FDU staff.
Anderson went 209-62 over 10 seasons at St. Thomas Aquinas, but couldn’t get a Division I program to take a chance on him until this year. He hopes his success may open doors for future nondivision I head coaches.
“I’m not going to gloat, but there’s a chip on my shoulder, too, without a doubt, because when you’re constantly told, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ and, ‘That’s great what you’re doing,’ but basically being told it wouldn’t translate into Division I,” Anderson said. “They almost sometimes look at Division II and Division III almost like it’s a different sport. Which is a shame, because there are really coaches at the Division III and Division II level. I mean, Brian Beaury, when he was at Saint Rose, he built that powerhouse. He’s a tremendous coach. He did a great job.”
Just two years ago, Anderson coached St. Thomas Aquinas in the NCAA Division II East Regional, played inside an empty Albany Capital Center because of COVID -19 restrictions. He bought three of his STAC players with him to FDU — guards Demetre Roberts, Grant Singleton and Sean Moore — and they combined for 39 points in the upset of Purdue.
Anderson did interviews with ESPN Sports Center and NBC’S Today Show after that game. He said he got his best night of sleep in a week Saturday night. He’s getting his team ready against Florida Atlantic, a different matchup than Purdue. FDU, with no player taller than 6-foot-7, was quicker and able to pressure Purdue and its 7-4 center Zach Edey.
“If we get to the Garden, that’d be something special,” Anderson said. “It’s like freakin’ Hoosiers. We’re going to try. Florida Atlantic is really good and they’re going to be tougher for us because they’re kind of like us, just a little bit stronger, a little bit better, a little more experience. A little more like our style.”