Hahaha. The Sisters of St. Joseph that live just up the road from the Siena campus are famous for their Saints fandom. Alas, Bryon McKim is not a nun.

Am interested in the feelings of MAAC and particularly Siena fans on this. I had occasion to watch much of the Siena games during the MAAC tournament. I think, despite having the home court, it is very hard to win all the time in a one-and-done format, (especially when one keeps hearing that "if they lose - they won't get an at-large bid" - Nonsense in this case if you ask me but fortunately the point is moot).

Having said that, I am concerned on how flat they looked in the first half of each of their games. They were quite fortunate to win against Fairfield. They seem tight and uninspired at times. Was it the enormous pressure building after each of the games or is something more going on with the team?

sorry bryon!

I think Siena has had a habit this season of playing to the level of their competition, which has included slow starts against a lot of their opponents. Their conference tournament performance didn't strike me as being markedly different from all the regular-season play that I watched, with the obvious exception of Fairfield really stepping it up.

If you have bbstate access, check out the boxscores: http://www.bbstate.com/schools/SIE/boxes

If you look at the games that aren't slow starts, you can pretty much find a reason why each of them is a "big" game, or a rivalry game, or a game where they're rebounding from a loss.

The Fairfield game had echoes of the Mount St. Mary's game from January 2nd. The little NEC school that could went on a run in the 1st half that almost ended Siena's home winning streak back in that part of the season right before all the Top 25 voters and prognosticators started maybe caring about Siena again. That game also went into overtime before the deal was sealed.

Thank you for your observations. I get worried a bit when teams "play to the level of their competition" too often. Maybe their "habit" this year might actually work to their favor a bit and keep them below a 10 seed where the chances of two wins in the tournament will actually be better than last year when they seemed to be playing much better as a team but got the dreaded 8-9.

LOL. Thanks for the Congrats!

I think Ed is right on here. The only thing I would add is that this is a team that has a hard time playing 40 minutes. There have been very few games where this occurred. The only games that really come to mind were the first 2 against Rider during the regular season. I think this speaks to Ed's point about playing to the competition. This is a team that when they show up for 40 minutes, they can play with Vandy, Ohio State, Louisiville, and others, but they have to bring their A game, which they always seem to do at the NCAA Tournament.

I mean, that IS what a lot of the fans hope will happen, but that has everything to do with strength of schedule and not necessarily a performance issue. This year's Saints went 27-6 (17-1 MAAC) compared to last year's 26-7 (16-2 MAAC), and neither version had any out-of-conference RPI Top 50 wins prior to the Dance.

The other MAAC teams didn't fare as well this time around, which dragged down Siena's numbers. As an example, last year's 2-1 record against #49 Niagara had given Siena its two Top 50 wins. The Niagara and Rider squads that were picked in this year's preseason coach's poll to finish 2nd and 3rd, respectively, ended up struggling all season. (Siena's RPI literally dropped each time it had to beat poor old Marist.)

And then the bigger difference was the out-of-conference schedule. The year prior, Siena played guarantee games against Kansas and Pitt -- lost them both -- that funded that summer's team trip to Europe (where they got to play some hoops in the Italian city of Siena). This time around, Siena was looking for home-and-home series. Above the Red Line, they only got a 2-for-1 from Georgia Tech, and that one had an inside track since GT coach Paul Hewitt used to coach the Saints. They had a hell of a time filling out the remaining home-game commitments... would you believe that a lot of teams weren't interested in playing an away game at a school that had just come off back-to-back Round of 32 appearances, hadn't lost a home game all year, and returned 4 out of 5 starters?