Siena's Elisa Mevius takes a shot next to St. Bonaventure's Maddie Dziezgowski at MVP Arena in Albany Wednesday, November 16, 2022.
For three of the Capital Region’s Division I basketball teams, it was a very good week. For the fourth, not so much.
The Siena men and women both posted 2-0 weeks — the men beating Mount St. Mary’s and Marist, the women holding off Manhattan and beating Niagara on a 50-foot buzzer better — and the UAlbany women topped Bryant and Binghamton. The UAlbany men, on the other hand, lost to Bryant and Binghamton, extending their losing streak to nine.
This week on the men’s side, Siena’s only contest is a Friday night home game against Quinnipiac, while UAlbany is home Wednesday against UMBC before traveling to Maine on Saturday. On the women’s side, UAlbany visits UMBC on Wednesday before gearing up for its senior night matchup Saturday at home against rival Maine, while Siena has a Thursday morning matchup at Iona and a Saturday night road game against Marist.
Michael Kelly, Adam Shinder and Will Springstead cover college basketball for The Daily Gazette, and each week set the scene for the upcoming action.
Area players cleaned up in the conference awards this week, with two Player of the Week and three Rookie of the Week honors.
Siena women’s freshman point guard Elisa Mevius swept both MAAC weekly honors, the first player in program history to pull off that feat. Mevius had back-to-back career-high scoring performances, with 24 points Thursday against Manhattan and 26 points — including a game-winning buzzer-beater from 50 feet — on Saturday against Niagara. It was her first Player of the Week and fourth Rookie of the Week award this season, and snapped a string of five straight rookie honors earned by teammate Teresa Seppala.
Back from a two-game absence illness, Siena’s Michael Eley won his fifth MAAC men’s Rookie of the Week award after averaging 17 points over the Saints’ two wins, including a career-high 23 points off the bench in Friday’s win at Mount St. Mary’s.
UAlbany women’s forward Kayla Cooper earned her second America East Player of the Week honor in less than a month, averaging 19 points and 10.5 rebounds as the Great Danes completed season sweeps of Bryant and Binghamton.
Jonathan Beagle tied the UAlbany men’s program record with his seventh America East Rookie of the Week award, matching the mark set by Jon Iati in 2003-04. Beagle put up 14 points per game in the Great Danes’ losses to Bryant and Binghamton.
TAKEAWAYS FROM THE LAST WEEK
THE SIENA MEN NEED TO UTILIZE THE TIME AHEAD OF THEM
Before a two-game road trip to play Rider and Iona on Feb. 24 and 26 that will go a long way toward determining a MAAC regular-season champion, the Siena men have a pivotal stretch. Between this past Sunday’s win and the Feb. 24 game at Rider, the Saints play one game — this Friday against Quinnipiac — in 10 days they need to use to get right. With the exception of Jordan Kellier (foot), Siena finally has all of its key players back and that means head coach Carmen Maciariello’s group has the opportunity in the coming days to work on itself and get sharp as March approaches after a 5-4 stretch played amid roster challenges and off-court hardships.
THE UALBANY MEN ARE PLAYING OUT THE STRING
After another winless week, the Great Danes have now lost nine in a row. The last four of those came by double-digits, including a 14-point loss in overtime against Binghamton on Saturday. UAlbany now sits three games behind Maine for the eighth and final America East playoff spot with just four regular-season games remaining. To reach the postseason, the Great Danes likely need to sweep their remaining games and need either Maine or NJIT to lose out. It’s an increasingly unlikely scenario in what’s going to go down as one of the worst — if not the outright worst — Division I season in program history.
THERE MAY NOT BE ENOUGH ADJECTIVES FOR THE SIENA WOMEN
High-scoring, talented, fun, fast-paced, frenetic, undisciplined, careless, relentless, determined are but a few of the words people have described the Saints, who have managed a 10-5 conference record and 16-9 overall mark. Their win over Niagara probably had fans running the full gamut of emotions. You’re never sure what you’re going to see with the Saints, but they certainly have been entertaining this season.
QUESTIONS FOR WHAT’S AHEAD
IS FRIDAY’S GAME AGAINST QUINNIPIAC A MAKE-OR-BREAK MOMENT IN THE SIENA MEN’S BID FOR A MAAC REGULAR-SEASON TITLE?
Kelly: I’ll go with “No,” here . . . but this is the type of game that could swing a lot, in terms of how folks should feel about the Saints moving forward. Win or lose against Quinnipiac, the games the following weekend at Rider and Iona should decide how the MAAC’s regular-season title chase plays out. If Siena cannot take care of business against Quinnipiac at MVP Arena, it will sound some alarm bells. But, still, I’ll go with “No” because Siena’s already shown repeatedly this season that it can bounce back from tough outcomes and not let a bad loss fester.
Shinder: I’ll go with an exceedingly mild “Yes,” since it’s really more of a “can’t-lose” game than a “must-win” game. Even though Siena can still assure itself of holding tiebreakers over the two teams currently a half-game ahead of the Saints in the standings — Rider and Iona — with road wins next weekend, that road sweep is such a tough ask that the Saints absolutely cannot afford to give any games away, especially on their home court. While a win Friday won’t come close guaranteeing the Saints the top seed for the conference tournament in Atlantic City, considering that a loss to Quinnipiac makes that scenario really, really unlikely, Friday is sneakily important.
Springstead: I don’t think so. It’s the “sexy” game of the five left in the regular season with a 9 p.m. start, ESPNU and all that, but if they win, they still have to take care of business the next weekend with Rider and Iona. If they lose, it’s not ideal because you’d like signs of a multiple-game winning streak entering the MAAC Tournament, which they could still get, but a five-game win streak over three weekends sounds and feels better.
BETWEEN UALBANY AND SIENA, ARE WE GETTING THREE CONFERENCE ROOKIE OF THE YEAR WINNERS THIS SEASON?
Shinder: Getting two seems to be a near-mortal lock. UAlbany’s Jonathan Beagle is fifth in the America East in field goal percentage, sixth in rebounding, and in the top-20 in both scoring and minutes played. Siena’s Teresa Seppala and Elisa Mevius have dominated the MAAC women’s Rookie of the Week honors so much that it virtually guarantees one of them — slight edge to Seppala for her full-season body of work — gets it. This comes down to whether Michael Eley is the MAAC men’s Rookie of the Year. Given how much better the Saints seem to be when he plays — and is impactful — I’ll go ahead and say yes, we do get three.
Kelly: Maybe the way this gets weird is if Mevius and Seppala either tie for the award or somehow split their vote? But, with the caveat that MAAC men’s basketball has a less-than-stellar track record with handing out awards in a way that makes 100% sense, UAlbany and Siena should combine to win three of the rookie awards this season.
Springstead: Yes, we are. Beagle’s consistency leaves voters little other choice for AE Rookie of the Year. True that another Mevius weekly honor might split the vote, but only with Seppala, so it’s a po-ta-to, po-tah-to situation. I agree with Adam that when Eley is in the lineup, they are better. And in the eyes of other coaches, he’s a matchup problem. Not the way Jared Billups is, but still one whose athleticism makes him deserving of the honor.
MAKE THE CALL: UALBANY WOMEN THIS WEEK … 2-0, 1-1 OR 0-2?
Springstead: 2-0, and here’s why: I think a fog lifted last week, not just over UAlbany but the whole league. What it revealed is that the top half of this league is incredibly close in talent. And what did UAlbany do while this was happening? Gritted its way to two wins. So the Great Danes aren’t gobs better than the rest, as we maybe once thought. But they showed to themselves and the league that if it comes to that, they know they have the talent and will play with confidence. So that, to me, says it’s going to be a 2-0 week.
Shinder: I literally would not be surprised one bit by any of these outcomes … so I’ll hedge right in the middle and say 1-1. UAlbany should be able to handle UMBC on the road, though the Retrievers are playing really good basketball of late, including a 17-point win over Maine. Then it’s Maine on Saturday, the seemingly eternal thorn in UAlbany’s side. It’s a home rematch of a game the Great Danes lost by a point last month, and Maine’s a team that will punish UAlbany if it gets off to another slow start. That’s exactly what happened in Orono, Maine a few weeks ago. I’m fairly confident UAlbany gets at least a split, but a sweep won’t be easy.
Kelly: I’ll go with 2-0. The truth is that UAlbany hasn’t done a lot, for multiple weeks now, to bring about a lot of confidence it can take care of business the way we would’ve expected them to do a month or so ago. The infrastucture, though, is still there for the program, and this is the type of week that the Great Danes could use to start to pivot their season back to where they were during the first weeks of January.
Free throws made by the Siena men in their wins over Mount St. Mary’s and Marist, their most in any two-game stretch this season. As a team, the Saints went 42 of 53 at the charity stripe over the weekend, including a perfect 19 of 19 performance from Javian McCollum.
Turnovers the Siena women made in their 83-81 win last Saturday against Niagara. The season-high total came in a game the Saints mostly controlled before a late surge from Niagara necessitated Elisa Mevius make a 50-foot shot at the buzzer to claim the victory.
Overtime games the UAlbany teams played last Saturday against Binghamton. Both games, somehow, ended up with a double-digit final margin when the men lost by 14 points and the women won by 10.
“We got our butts kicked tonight.”
— UAlbany men’s head coach Dwayne Killings, summing up the Great Danes’ 87-62 loss to Bryant last Wednesday.
“My adrenaline was so high, I just kind of took the ball, followed my intention, I guess, and we got lucky I hit it.”
— Siena’s Elisa Mevius, in a clip shared to the team’s social media, reacting to her game-winning 50-foot buzzer-beater in Saturday’s win over Niagara.
“I couldn’t tell you what goes through people’s minds when they turn down an open shot.”
— Siena’s Andrew Platek, who isn’t exactly shy about shooting the ball, regarding why the Saints had some uncharacteristic possessions with players turning down open shots against Marist this past Sunday.
Categories: College Sports, Siena College, Sports, UAlbany
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