By Jonah Bronstein
When the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament seeds sprouted Sunday evening, some coaches were relieved to see their teams on the opposite side of the bracket as Siena, the consensus favorites to win a third MAAC championship on its home floor in Albany.
Iona’s Kevin Willard wasn’t one of them.
“When I saw we were opposite Niagara, I wasn’t that happy,” Willard, the 2010 MAAC Coach of the Year, said on a conference call Monday. “If you told me at the beginning of the year we’d come in third place and we’d have to play Niagara, I’d have thought you were nuts.”
In the preseason coaches poll, Niagara was picked second while Iona was voted ninth. Iona (21-9, 12-6 MAAC) wound up having its best season in four years and claiming the No. 3 seed, while Niagara (17-14, 9-9) underachieved and was seeded sixth, setting up tonight’s MAAC quarterfinal matchup between the two teams.
Iona is one of three teams the Purple Eagles were hoping to see in the MAAC tournament, along with Rider and Saint Peter’s.
“Because they all beat us twice,” Niagara guard Tyrone Lewis said. “That’s extra motivation.”
The Gaels handed Niagara its first conference loss on Jan. 2, coming back from a 10-point second-half deficit to win 63-60 at HSBC Arena. Two weeks later, the Purple Eagles had one of their worst offensive outings ever under coach Joe Mihalich, and lost 64-47 at Iona.
“That was one of those games where everybody played bad,” Lewis said. “You can’t find a bright light in that game for us.”
Those losses came during a stretch when the Purple Eagles won just twice in nine games. Of late, Niagara has looked a bit more like the team many expected to be Siena’s biggest challenger this year, winning six of its last eight games.
“I think they are playing as good as anybody in the conference,” Willard said.
Iona is one of the youngest teams in the MAAC, with backup forward Jonathan Huffman being the only senior that sees minutes. Sophomore point guard Scott Machado, a second-team all-conference pick, is the only Gael who is scoring in double figures (12.4).
The Gaels are the best 3-point shooting team in the MAAC, making 37.1 percent of their attempts from beyond the arc. Niagara, however, is the best team in the MAAC at defending the 3-point line, as opponents are making just 30.5 percent of their shots this season.
In its two earlier wins, Iona was able to stifle the Purple Eagles’ fastbreak and exploit 6-foot-8 center Alejo Rodriguez’s physical advantage inside. Niagara’s 6-8 redshirt freshman Eric Williams matched up well with Rodriquez in the second half of the game at HSBC Arena, and he wound up starting the next four contests. But after playing only the first two minutes in the loss at Iona, Williams fell out of Mihalich’s rotation.
Williams was called upon to bang bodies with Fairfield’s burly big man Anthony Johnson for five minutes of Sunday’s overtime loss to end the regular season. But recently, Niagara has gotten strong play from its other pivotmen, 6-5 sophomore Kashief Edwards and 6-8 freshman Scooter Gillette, who has scored 11 points in back-to-back games. Neither Edwards or Gillette was a factor in the two January losses to Iona.
“I knew Scooter had it in him,” teammate Bilal Benn said. “The more comfortable a player gets on the floor with his teammates, that’s when you start to see him flourish. Kashief has been doing all of the dirty work for us all year. Those kids, and Eric, have really helped us out. They’ve really been saving our season. And they need to keep that going because this is when it really counts.”
