The Siena Saints entered this season as one of the “It” teams from outside the six power conferences. For proof of the Saints’ rise in the eyes of many, Grant Wahl — Sports Illustrated’s excellent college basketball writer — listed Siena as the best mid-major team outside of Gonzaga, and the magazine listed the Saints as the 20th best team in the country entering the season.
However, the thing that, at least in my opinion, many people overlooked in determining how good the Saints would be this year is the loss of Kenny Hasbrouck. Siena may have everyone else back this season, including leading scorer Edwin Ubiles, but Hasbrouck was the MAAC’s Player of the Year for a reason. He easily could have been an impact player at any of the best schools in the nation, and over his four year career was the MAAC’s Rookie of the Year, a second-team all-league selection, twice a first-team selection and he would have been the Player of the Year if not for the presence of lottery pick Jason Thompson from Rider.
That loss has loomed large for Siena in the early part of their schedule, which may have already doomed them to miss out on the NCAA Tournament if they fail to win the MAAC’s conference tournament next March. Coming into the season, Siena had five games on their schedule — not including February’s “BracketBuster” — that they could target as potential signature non-conference wins: at Temple, against St. John’s on a neutral court, at Georgia Tech, at Northern Iowa and home against Saint Joseph’s. Two games into those five, however, it’s beginning to look like the Saints may have already squandered their opportunity.
In what many considered to be a toss-up game, Siena fought hard in losing to Temple in Philadelphia, 73-69, last week. Then last night, after entering the game as 6.5 point-favorites, the Saints held an early nine-point lead in the second half before falling apart down the stretch and losing to St. John’s, 77-68, in another game in Philadelphia.
In all honesty, their best chance at having that name-recognition win was squandered last night. The Red Storm came into last night’s game still missing Anthony Mason, Jr., who has been sidelined since before the season began with a hamstring injury, as well as reserve forward Rob Thomas. Still, Siena was unable to find a way to knock off St. John’s, just like they failed to beat Temple the week before.
There is little question that playing better competition is a good thing for teams in lower conferences like the MAAC, and all credit to Siena for scheduling up to the level they hope to play and then performing. But the bottom line is that the MAAC has only ever sent two teams to the NCAA Tournament in a season once (1995, when Manhattan got a 13th seed and St. Peter’s a 15th), and has had teams play in the play-in game twice in the past eight years (including Siena in 2002).
It’s not a lock that the Saints will be shut out if they fail to win the conference tournament — they could very well go down to Atlanta and beat Georgia Tech Wednesday and make much of this moot. But barring that, it will be tough for Siena to make the case to the committee that they had several close losses against good teams in their non-conference schedule when they play the majority of their conference games against vastly inferior competition.
Especially if, come March, they are sitting on the bubble with teams like Temple and St. John’s.