By Stuart Seidel
ALBANY, NY – We are officially into conference play for the MAAC conference as the game between Iona and Siena were their 3rd and 4th conference games respectively. Siena was coming off of two straight tough wins against Bucknell and Fairfield winning by no more than 2 points both games. Siena was sitting in 4th with a 2-1 conference record while Iona was down in 7th at 1-1 but owned the best overall record in the conference at 8-5. Iona was picked to win the MAAC before the season started and showed that this Sunday.
Iona came out moving the ball quickly right away. A.J. English led the way for Iona leading many fast breaks and penetrating to the basket. He finished the first half with 13 points but only shot 3-7 from the charity stripe. Iona as a team shot an abysmal 56% from the line in the first half. This along with out rebounding Iona allowed Siena to stay in the game but trailed by 10 at the half mainly due to turnovers. Siena had 11 turnovers after the first half while Iona had only 5. This was mostly credited to Iona successfully moving the ball quickly which seemed to put pressure on Siena to due the same but turned the ball over often as a result.
The later stages of the first half contained a lot of booing from the fans and even three technicals being handed out, one of them being to Siena’s head coach Jimmy Patsos. It was certainly a fiery first half with a lot of passion and a lot of questionable calls and questionable no calls.
The second half wasn’t much different as the fans were very open with their feedback for the refs which caused the building to get loud with boos and cheers. Siena fans would let out screams of joy when Siena would hit a three to cut down the lead and go silent when Iona would go right back down and answer with a three of their own. Which seemed to happen countless times tonight.
Senior Rob Poole played a solid game along with Lavon Long for Siena but it wasn’t enough as Iona was able to overwhelm the Saints. Too many times Siena would be attacking down low and get stripped from behind, almost never having their heads on a swivel. Siena did show signs of great basketball battling back in the second half but just couldn’t keep Iona from hitting big shots. Siena even had a lead of one point after Poole hit a big three to make it 58-57 causing the building to erupt. But once again Iona marched down responded with a three and never looked back ultimately winning 86-72.
Iona was able to use their speed and their fast breaks to get a lot of open looks especially behind the arc. Even though Siena was able to close the gap in the second half with tight defense Iona still seemed to hit every shot even with a hand in their face. Their three point field goal percentage wasn’t as high as you’d expect but that was due to the quantity of three pointers they took. They were either charging to the hoop or chucking it up from three point range. It was just one of those games for Siena as every time they seemed to get momentum and cut down the lead Iona would hit a big shot and take back control. Siena is back in action against Niagara on January 8th in Albany at the Times Union Center.
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