COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Unity has Medaille dancing

By David J. Hill

BUFFALO — Medaille College is proving that the teams that stick together win together.

Both the men’s and women’s basketball squads tout their closeness as a key reason for their success this season. Both won the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference Tournament title. The men did so for the second straight season, and the Lady Mavs won the tournament for the fourth time in five years.

As a result, both are playing today in the first round of their respective NCAA Division III tournaments, with the men’s team (23-4) traveling to Plattsburgh, N.Y., to face Nazareth College (18-9) at 6 p.m., and the women (25-2) going to Arlington, Va., to tip off against Lebanon Valley College (23-4) at 5 p.m.

At the helm of the women’s program is former Niagara University men’s coach Pete Lonergan, now in his seventh year with Medaille, where he’s led the Lady Mavs to seven straight winning seasons.

Lonergan’s assistant is Bill Agronin, who amassed the most victories of any NU women’s coach before stepping down in 2007.

Medaille is going to the tournament again after an undefeated conference season. They’ve done without any real stud players.

“We were 20-0 and won the conference tournament, and we don’t have a single player on the first team all-conference,” Lonergan said. “That proves what a team we were, because it was unselfish players. It still seems unique to go undefeated and do it as a team with no individual super stars.”

The Medaille men, meanwhile, consider their team one big family that spends a lot of time together off the basketball court. That’s the biggest difference junior Joe Mogavero, a Kenmore West graduate, has noticed from last year’s team. “We’re so much more together,” he said before practice this week. “And it’s not just a basketball thing. We actually went bowling as a team the other day. There’s a lot of brotherhood on this team. It obviously shows a lot on the court.”

That belief in brotherhood, players say, trickles down from fourth-year head coach Mike MacDonald. “It’s important,” he said of the team’s closeness. “ I come from a big family, and I have four kids myself. We start in October, so we’re together a long time,” Coach Mac added. “You’ve got to make sure you all get along.”

Fitting in to the program was no problem for Newfane’s David Shuey, who transferred to Medaille for his sophomore season after playing at Hilbert College last year. “These guys made it a great experience,” Shuey said of the transition. “We’re like a family here. Nobody cares what their stats are. We may not have the best talent, but we have the best chemistry.”

Shuey’s role at Medaille is far less substantial than it was at Hilbert, where he played big minutes. “It would have been easy for him to say, ‘Oh, I should be playing more,’” MacDonald said, adding that Shuey has handled the reduced role well. “The last few weeks, he’s easily been one of our most improved players,” Coach Mac said.

The reduced minutes haven’t bothered Shuey one bit, though. “I’ll give up minutes any day to be a part of a team like this,” he said.

Sophomore Phil Maiarana of Kenmore shares that sentiment. He’s just happy to be part of a winning program, something he enjoyed while playing for Mark Simon at St. Joe’s, where he helped the Marauders win the Manhattan Cup his senior year.

“You always want to be successful. Being able to come into a program having so much success and contribute right away is a great feeling,” said Maiarana, whom MacDonald praised for his play in the AMCC tournament. “I don’t think we win that tournament without the way he played, along with (sophomore guard) Angel Flores,” MacDonald said.

Proving just how much he believes in that family motto, MacDonald hasn’t strayed from much from the Western New York family of high school talent. Of the 17 players listed on the team’s roster, only two hail from outside the Buffalo and Rochester area. Both are from down state.

It’s an interesting progression, that players who were once rivals are now teammates, said Shuey, of Newfane. “We were all kind of battling in high school with each other. It’s crazy. We were enemies at first and now we’re basically all friends,” he said. “It shows what kind of players we have here in Western New York.”

Even the Medaille coaching staff reflects the local flare of the team’s roster. Assistant coach Sean Mahany was team manager at Niagara for four years. Medaille’s JV coach is Sanborn resident Nate Beutel, the Niagara Gazette’s high school sports reporter, while the JV assistant coach is Kenmore East grad Bill Gersitz, who played on last year’s AMCC championship team.

MacDonald has believed in the region’s talent from his first day on the job. “We thought there were a lot of kids in the area who could be Division III players,” he said, adding that he believed that Medaille could be a destination for local players, who often opt instead to go to St. John Fisher or Nazareth. But that’s changing now.

“We want to recruit Buffalo and Rochester area guys,” MacDonald said. “We think there are enough kids from Section V and Section VI who can take us over the top.”

That’s certainly been the case the past two seasons, and MacDonald believes that highlights the caliber of players available in the region. “It’s tough. We were picked No. 1 at the beginning of the season and had a bull’s-eye on our back,” MacDonald said. “We started out well and the bull’s-eye gets even bigger. It’s tough to go wire to wire. It’s really a testament to the their fortitude. It really speaks a lot about them as individuals.”

While everything about last year’s run was new for the Mavericks, who had never won the AMCC tournament, nor participated in the D-III tournament, there’s a greater focus on this year’s team, according to MacDonald.

“They were happy after we won the tournament, but they weren’t over the top like last year,” MacDonald said. “You can tell they want to do something else. They think there’s another mountain to climb.”

Regardless of whether they reach the summit, they’ll make the climb together.

Contact reporter David J. Hill at 693-1000, ext. 115, or dave.hill@tonawanda-news.com

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