When Fran McCaffery and Kenny Hasbrouck arrived at Siena College four years ago, the men’s basketball program was coming off a 6-24 season.
How quickly fortunes can change in college basketball.
McCaffery, Hasbrouck and the rest of the Saints were at Colonie Town Hall Monday to receive the key to the town after a second consecutive Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title and opening round win in the NCAA Tournament.
It was the least that the town could do after the Saints raised the national profile of the 3,000-student private college tucked off Route 9 between Fiddler’s Lane and Spring Street.
It was a phenomenal opportunity for our players to experience a number of different things, said McCaffery. `Obviously, getting to play in the NCAA Tournament is something most players don’t get to experience in their careers, and many of these guys got to experience it twice. And then, to beat Ohio State in the first round and take Louisville to the wire proved that we can compete with any team in the country.`
The Saints accomplished several firsts this year:
First back-to-back league championships
First consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament
First single-digit seed (No. 9 in the Midwest Region)
First double overtime victory in an NCAA Tournament game
Tied school record for wins in a season (27).
All of this took place during a season in which great expectations were placed upon Siena from Saints fans to national magazines that predicted a second consecutive MAAC title.
`Everyone was after us,` said Hasbrouck. `On the team, we didn’t see (the predictions) as pressure. We put pressure on ourselves to get back to the NCAA Tournament.`
`I told the guys, ‘Understand, it’s great to pick up these preseason magazines and see all the nice things written about us, but let’s not forget all the hard work that it took to get us to this point,’` said McCaffery.
Resurrecting a Siena program that had sunk to the bottom of the MAAC in 2004-05 was actually not a long process for McCaffery. In his first year, he guided the Saints to a 16-13 finish. Two years later, he had Siena in the NCAA Tournament and beating up on Vanderbilt in the first round.
`Until last year when we won those six straight games toward the end of the season and beat Vanderbilt that’s when I saw the talent level that we had,` said Hasbrouck.
The 21-point victory over Vanderbilt raised Siena’s national profile to a level that put the Saints on par with such highly-regarded mid-major programs as Gonzaga and Xavier. The Saints showed up on national cable TV twice during the 2008-09 regular season ` the first time when they traveled to Big East power Pittsburgh in December, and the second time when they hosted Northern Iowa in an ESPN2 BracketBuster game meant to showcase some of the top mid-majors.
The MAAC also helped Siena by putting the Saints in its annual Old Spice Classic tournament last November in Orlando. Though the Saints wound up losing their three games to Tennessee, Wichita State and Oklahoma State, it gave them a taste of what to expect come March.
Siena’s tough non-league schedule ` which also included a road loss at Kansas ` helped the Saints land the No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament as it also gave them a lesson on how to deal with adversity. That ability to keep pushing no matter how far down they were was what helped them bounce back from a 12-point deficit to edge Ohio State 74-72 in the opening round.
`Arguably, it was one of our worst performances of the year (offensively), but it showed that we could fight through that and win,` said McCaffery.
The Saints continued to fight in their second-round game against top-seeded Louisville. They came back from a double-digit deficit to take a 63-59 lead before the Cardinals bounced back to pull out a 79-72 win.
That performance will likely raise Siena’s profile higher for next year, but McCafferry said there’s still work to do to bring the Saints to the same level as the top mid-majors.
`Those programs have been good for 10 years,` he said of Gonzaga and Xavier. `We have been as good at times, but not consistently as good over those 10 years as those other teams. That’s what we’ve got to work on.`
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