MAAC Tripleheader: Success at NYCB LIVE, home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum

2/3/2018 1:43:50 AM

By: Sean Brennan

When the MAAC held its men’s basketball tripleheader at the newly-renovated NYCB LIVE, home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum last Saturday, it was a chance for the conference to spread its wings a bit, put its teams on a bigger stage, and expand its brand to a locale that may not be as familiar with MAAC basketball.

And if the coaches’ reviews of the day are any indication, it may not be the last time the MAAC partners with NYCB LIVE, home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Quinnipiac and Fairfield got things underway last Saturday when the two Connecticut rivals tipped off at 1 p.m. It was the first meeting of the season for the two schools; with Cameron Young logging 15 points, eight rebounds, and eight assists, and defensive whiz Isaiah Washington holding Fairfield’s Tyler Nelson, the MAAC’s leading scorer, to just 13 points on 4-of-18 shooting, the Bobcats pulled off a 75-70 victory.
 
Baker Dunleavy, the former long-time Villanova assistant coach, now in his first season as head coach at Quinnipiac, was not only impressed with the league but also the MAAC event at the Coliseum.

“I think the MAAC is a difficult league, first and foremost,” said Dunleavy, who was part of Villanova’s coaching staff when the Wildcats won the national championship in 2016 “I think it’s a league with really good coaching. You got to bring it every night because you know your opponent is going to be prepared and play hard. We’ve been in a lot of battles, a lot of close games, kind of grind-it-out battles and I think that’s what this league is, a tough league and one that we’re definitely excited to be a part of.”

Dunleavy liked the idea of tipping off the day at the refurbished Coliseum.

“We were the first game and I thought the setup was terrific,” Dunleavy said. “I thought having not been in the Nassau Coliseum since it had been renovated, I was really impressed with what they had done. It was very clean, new, updated and I thought it was a really good venue for basketball. It had a modern, updated look to it but it still had an old-school feel in terms of size. Some of the new arenas are so big, but this one had a smaller feel to it but updated and modern, which was nice.”

Fairfield was led in the game by up-and-coming freshman Jesus Cruz, who finished with a double-double with 21 points and 10 rebounds. But as impressed as Stags’ coach Sydney Johnson was with his play, he was even more impressed with the venue and the event itself.

“I would say (MAAC Commissioner) Rich Ensor and staff need to get a huge thumbs up because I thought to put those games in that arena and to have a signature event in that building was first class,” Johnson said. “From the way the building looked, to the people who greeted you, to the locker rooms, to the games themselves, which I think were very well played and closely contested. I’d say it was a way to showcase our league and I thought it looked really good on a great stage.”

Monmouth and Marist competed in the second game of the triple-bill where the Hawks’ Austin Tilghman stole the show. The senior guard logged a career-high 24 points vs. the Red Foxes and completed his double-double with 12 rebounds to help secure a 91-78 Monmouth victory. The performance helped Tilghman snag MAAC Player of the Week honors this past week.

It was an A-plus performance in an A-plus arena, according to Monmouth head coach King Rice.  
 
“The Coliseum, how it looked, was incredible,” Rice said. “How people treated us, I thought everyone was super professional. The people were friendly, the arena was beautiful and the court was great. Nothing but positives.”

Marist head coach Mike Maker was also an enthusiastic supporter of the MAAC tripleheader, though he would change one thing if he could.

“I’d like to win,” Maker said. “But I’m hoping in the future that they will continue to do events like that to market our league. The tripleheader is good for our league. I thought it was a great environment in a beautiful facility in close proximity to the footprint of the MAAC. Being in the metropolitan area where we have a lot of alumni and families, I thought it was a win-win for our league. It was a great event. I thought the league did a really good job in promoting it and anytime you can be under one roof and have multiple games in that kind of setting, it was a really good day.”   

Iona and Manhattan concluded the tripleheader with the final game of the day when the Gaels’ Schadrac Casimir led six Iona players in double figures with 20 points. Manhattan, which was led by both Zane Waterman and Zavier Turner with 18 points apiece, cut the Iona lead to five points with 1:25 to play. But the Gaels scored the final eight points of the game to seal the win.
And while the win was the most important thing to Iona head coach Tim Cluess, the Long Island native said it was a memorable night for him to coach at the Coliseum.
 
“I actually liked it a lot,” Cluess said. “I thought it was a little bit more intimate. Clean looking, nicer locker rooms, nice hallways in the back, the gym was great. I thought the acoustics were good for a place like that, too. It was a small crowd in a big arena but the crowd was loud in there. I thought that was pretty interesting. A lot of times when we play in big arenas, it may not be full and it’s quiet. But it wasn’t there. I don’t know how many people were at our game but it sounded very loud and you could feel the energy on the court, which was pretty cool.”

Despite seeing his Jaspers take the loss in its tripleheader game vs. Iona, Manhattan head coach Steve Masiello gave both the event and the arena a rave review.

“I thought it was a great event and it was a beautiful venue,” Masiello said. “I thought it had a great feel to it, like a tournament feel. It was a great day for MAAC basketball and I could easily see the Nassau Coliseum becoming a future home of the MAAC Basketball Championships. From the locker room we were in, to the whole setup there, I think it’s ideal. There are a lot of restaurants out there and there are great hotels right there, so from that standpoint, I think it would work for a variety of reasons. I think the Coliseum is located near a lot of MAAC schools, where seven or eight of the school’s fan bases could easily get there. So, I think it makes sense for a lot of reasons.”   

With positives across the board from some of the coaches who competed in the tripleheader, talk turned to whether the Nassau Coliseum could be a viable candidate for future MAAC Championships.   

All six coaches polled voiced their approval for the idea.

“I think it’s a good area because there are a lot of alumni from all the MAAC schools that live on Long Island so the fan bases that want to get to the MAAC Championship that would be good for them,” Cluess said. “I think it’s nice to hold the conference championship in different venues if you’re not going to go with the highest seeds’ home court because it could expand the fan base to other areas and help build a bigger fan base as the MAAC continues to progress forward.”

Dunleavy, who spent his past seven postseason tournaments at Madison Square Garden while with Villanova, thinks the Coliseum would be a nice landing spot for future MAAC Championships.

“As far as we’re concerned I think it’s a state-of-the-art arena in a good location for Northeast schools and obviously it’s near a very large population base,” Dunleavy said. “I think it would be a terrific venue, we enjoyed being there but I’m sure there are a lot of details that go into it that I’m not privy to. But as far as playing the game, it’s a good place to play and one we’d be excited about.”

Johnson, who has coached in some of the top arenas in the country during his stints at Georgetown and Princeton, thinks a MAAC Championship in the Coliseum would be a home run.

“Strong vote for that from my end but the coaches don’t really get a vote on that,” Johnson said. “I was fortunate enough to be at Princeton and we went to a lot of different places. I went to a Final Four with Georgetown and I’ve been here seven years and I’ve been in some really nice places. Our building here (the Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport) is really nice and I think I would put the Coliseum up there with a lot of them. We played in the Barclays a number of times with Fairfield and I would put the Nassau Coliseum right up there and I mean that wholeheartedly. How are the rims? How is the lighting? How are the locker rooms? How is the support staff? All of those were A-plus from my vantage point at the Coliseum. I think it would be a win-win.”

While Cluess thought the tripleheader could use a little tweaking - “they shouldn’t have so much time in between games because that’s basically chasing the fans out,” he said - there wasn’t much in the way of negatives that came out of last Saturday. And while the announced crowd for the three games was stated as 2,545, Dunleavy thinks had it been the Championship, the numbers would have been higher.

“Obviously you’d hope with the MAAC Championship there would be a bigger draw,” Dunleavy said. “We had three games that were pretty far spaced apart. It’s not like the fans for the second and third game were there for our game. But I don’t think it’s representative of what a MAAC Championship would be like, that’s for sure.”

Rice, who said the Coliseum checked all the boxes with him, said wherever the league decides the Championship will be held after the current deal with Albany expires after the 2019 season, it will be fine with him. He said he’s all for what’s good for the conference.

“The Coliseum works 100 percent,” Rice said. “The first year I was in this league the Championship was in Massachusetts and not a lot of people traveled. Then we go up to Albany and I don’t know if that’s the best place but that’s where the most people seem to show up. But we have a couple of schools in Connecticut, we have a couple in New York, you have a couple in Jersey. Everybody can get to the Coliseum. But I just want what’s best for our league, whatever that place is. I think as a league we have to start figuring out what’s best for all the members. If it’s the Coliseum, then let’s do the Coliseum. If it’s Albany then do Albany. If it’s Atlantic City, then let’s do that. Whatever’s best for the whole league and gives us the most bang, then that’s what we should do. We all need to be pulling in one direction to do what’s best for all the members of the league. Then our league will look better and it will fare better.”