Short-handed? No problem. Not with the way the Siena Saints played defense on Wednesday night.
OD Anosike scored 17 points and grabbed 13 rebounds, Evan Hymes and Kyle Downey each scored 14 and Siena held Florida Atlantic to just 21 points in the second half to beat the Owls 67-60 – the team’s second straight win and a surely needed boost heading into a conference showdown against Iona at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 3.
“I just think everybody on the team has the will to win,” Hymes said. “Even though we’re short, everything that’s happened to us this year with all the injuries, we just persevere. We came through and we played tough in this game.”
Maybe it was the unseasonably cool weather in South Florida. Maybe it was the pregame speech from legendary coach Rollie Massimino, a longtime friend of Saints coach Mitch Buonaguro. Maybe it was the amusement Siena found from having the school’s name listed as “Sienna” on the scoreboards before the game.
Whatever it was, it worked.
A Saints team that needed heroics from Ryan Rossiter and Clarence Jackson to beat FAU by three points at home last season came up even bigger on Wednesday, again playing only six guys, yet clearly being the fresher-legged team down the stretch. Rob Poole added 11 points, Brandon Walters and Owen Wignot combined for 14 rebounds, and the Saints (5-7) held FAU (4-9) to 30 percent shooting in the second half.
“Six guys, on the road, against a very athletic team,” Buonaguro said. “They’re a great group of kids. I have more fun coaching this team. They listen to the scouting. They listen in the time-outs. They execute. They play good defense. We’ve been holding team in the low-60s. It’s a team with great resolve. It’s a great team to coach. And no matter what, people are going to enjoy this team.” Packing in a zone, Siena dared FAU to shoot 3-pointers all night. The Owls went 8-for-21 from long range in the first half. In the second half, 0-for-10.
Game over.
Want your effort stats? Here they are:
– Siena outrebounded FAU 43-31.
– Siena outshot FAU 47 percent to 35.
– Siena controlled the paint, outscoring the Owls 34-24.
– Siena held FAU to three second-chance points all night.
No depth? Not a worry these days for Buonaguro and the Saints.
“It’s been tough with all the injuries and things like that,” Hymes said. “Can’t make excuses. You have to go out on the court and compete with whoever, whenever.”
There were 20 chairs set up on the Siena sideline. As usual, the Saints’ traveling party didn’t need most of them. During play, there were more Siena coaches and staff in suits on the bench (five) than reserves waiting to go into the game (four).
Here’s the best way of illustrating how not-very-deep the Siena “depth” chart is these days: The Saints’ bench came into the night playing an average of 38.1 minutes per game, by far the fewest in the nation. You could double the minutes for the Saints’ bench and still fall short of the reserve-minutes leaders in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, where Marist (81.9 bench minutes per game) and Manhattan (79.5) lead the way.
Such is life for the Saints these days, and they’re not complaining.
Down 11-4 early, Siena weathered the early storm. Walters’ layup with 13:58 left in the half put the Saints back on top, and off a runout, Wignot found Downey with a nifty touch pass to give Siena a 16-13 lead.
Wignot was a major factor on on both ends in the early going. Midway through the first half, FAU had a 4-on-1 break following a Siena turnover, with Wignot the lone man back for the Saints.
Your winner of that battle: Wignot.
He held his ground, contested a layup, won the fight for the rebound and preserved what was a 22-18 Siena lead. Back and forth the teams went for the rest of the half, and FAU took a 39-36 lead into the break – the ninth time in 12 games where Siena went into intermission trailing.
So the Saints clamped down defensively to open the second 20 minutes.
FAU scored only nine points in the first eight minutes of the second half. And after the Owls got it going _ briefly – to grab the lead back at 52-51, the Saints peeled off six straight points to match what was their biggest lead to that point.
Downey came off a screen to hit a jumper on a catch-and-shoot, Poole picked up a loose ball and connected from the right wing, and Hymes made a steal and reverse layup to cap the mini-burst and put Siena ahead 57-52 with 8:52 left.
Hymes hit a 14-footer with just under 4 minutes left, stretching the lead to 61-54. Afterward, the freshman guard punched his chest repeatedly. And the FAU crowd looked on in stunned silence.
“We just have to remember what we have to do,” Hymes said, “each and every night.”
That was Massimino’s message earlier in the day. Now the coach at Northwood, an NAIA powerhouse, Massimino is Buonaguro’s mentor. Massimino talked about adversity, about how to handle long odds.
The Saints listened.
Yes, this was an FAU team that came into the game with a 4-8 record. Here’s some of the teams who had beaten the Owls, though: Washington, South Florida, Kansas, Mississippi State, Miami and Harvard. In mid-November, former Siena coach Paul Hewitt brought his new club – George Mason – into FAU’s building and left on the short end of an 80-75 decision. And this was an Owls team that got rings for winning the Sun Belt’s regular-season title in 2011.
In short, they weren’t going away.
Owls guard Raymond Taylor – listed at 5-foot-6, 2 inches shorter than Hymes – drove the lane for a layup with 2:33 left, getting the Owls within 63-58. That’s when FAU coach Mike Jarvis took a bit of a risk, calling his next-to-last time-out before the Saints could inbound the ball. He did it to slap on a full-court press, which the Saints handled easily. And after working 32 ticks off the 35-second shot clock, Downey drew a foul on a dribble-drive. He coolly hit both free throws, pushing the lead back to seven with exactly 2 minutes remaining.
Poole hit Anosike with a bounce pass to set up a reverse layup, the lead was nine, and the outcome was academic. Only then could Siena exhale, and head into the New Year with a huge shot of momentum. Onto the Garden they go.
“These kids deserve a night like that,” Buonaguro said. “We’re playing in Madison Square Garden against a good team. We’ll compete and it’ll be fun.”
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