1 week Ago
Brendan Coyle couldn’t miss late. In between, American University presented the Siena men’s basketball team with some problems, but the Saints eventually ironed all that out and defeated the Eagles 74-66 at MVP Arena on Tuesday night to improve to 3-0. The 6-foot-11 Carey, who scored a grand total of nine points in 17 games over two seasons at Syracuse, had the game of his life, with 16 points and six blocks.
He was a big reason Siena made its first 11 shots — Carey had eight points before the game was six minutes old, on easy layups off feeds from Justice Shoats. The Saints needed Coyle’s 3-point shooting at the end of the game, making three straight in a span of four minutes, the last of which gave Siena a 70-59 lead with 1:10 left. “They’ve got a really good group; I do, too, I’ve got really good guards, and Peter Carey showed today what we all envisioned when he came here to play,” head coach Gerry McNamara said.
“I’ve watched him do it in practice, these guys have watched him do it in practice, and we were waiting for him to break out, and he did today.” “It was a matter of time,” Carey said. “It came down to resilience.
The first two games might not have gone my way, but keep your head in it, and I trusted in my teammates. “Being the center isn’t always the easiest. You’ve got to rely on other people to get you the ball.
The reads were there, like little slips under the basket. I didn’t really have to do too much. A lot of props to my guards.
” The Saints scored at will to start the game, making their first 11 shots to lead 23-13. Siena led by as many as 15, 34-19, with 5:41 left in the first half, but then had a difficult time finding good shots against the Eagles’ zone defense. Matt Rogers, who finished with 26 points for the Eagles (1-2), scored seven points during a 14-0 run to close the half.
After the Saints’ Myles Wilmoth missed inside with five seconds left, American got it upcourt quickly, and Wyatt Nausaidis hit a 3-pointer from the left corner at the buzzer to tie it at 36-36. After making their first 11 shots, the Saints were 5 for 15 from the field the rest of the half. “I would say the zone did puzzle us a little bit,” Shoats said.
“We figured it out. We just had to settle in. I feel like we were a little rushed.
” American, which was 8 for 16 from 3-point range, took its first lead of the game to start the second half when Rogers made a 3. Siena trailed by five midway through the second half, then tied it at 56-56 on a 3 by Shoats, who finished with 18 points and six assists. After Major Freeman gave Siena a 58-56 lead, Carey came up with a huge block from behind on a dunk attempt by Lincoln Ball.
Carey came up with another big block, on Rogers, with Siena leading 64-58 after a Coyle 3. “These are the things you love seeing as a coach,” McNamara said. “You love seeing a guy [Carey] who works toward something, that maybe no one anticipated except him.
You can’t underestimate the heart and determination of someone who puts in that type of effort behind the scenes. “When you can shoot the ball at his caliber and you add all the other pieces, he’s a mismatch problem.” Siena ran a play for Coyle coming out of a timeout, and the Niskayuna High graduate nailed his third three for the 70-59 lead.
“G-Mac always talks to me about shooting when I’m open, and he yells at me for not shooting when I’m open,” Coyle said with a grin. “My teammates found me in the right spots toward the end of the game, I got open looks and knocked them down.” “I’m proud of our group to punch back and weather that 14-0 run and come back in the second half and play pretty clean basketball,” McNamara said.
“We put a lot of pressure on the paint today.” Shoats was named MAAC Player of the Week on Monday after averaging 27.0 points, 3.
0 assists and 3.0 steals in overtime victories over Brown and Bryant. On Tuesday, Shoats received national recognition as one of five Division I players named by the U.
S. Basketball Writers Association as an Oscar Robertson National Player of the Week. Shoats joins JaKobe Coles (Grand Canyon), Tyson Dunn (Buffalo), Ty Johnson (UC Davis), and Ryan Kalkbrenner (Creighton) as one of the five honorees nationally for the Oscar Robertson National Players of the Week for the week ending Nov.
10. Each Tuesday during the regular season, designated USBWA board members select five standouts from the 32 Division I Conference Players of the Week to be recognized. A Division II transfer from Lock Haven, Shoats scored 23 points against Brown on Nov.
4 and 22 of his 31 points in the second half and overtime against Bryant. He hit the game-winning free throws with 16.9 seconds left in overtime against the Bulldogs.
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