The date was March 28, 2010. Siena was less than 10 days removed from their third consecutive NCAA tournament appearance after winning the MAAC title for the third year in a row. In 2008 and 2009, Siena picked up arguably two of the biggest wins in program history against national powerhouses Vanderbilt and Ohio State, two games that Siena fans will never forget.
The University of Iowa sits 1024 miles away from Siena College, a 15-and-a-half-hour drive. Thirteen days earlier on March 15 after two straight unsuccessful seasons where they went no better than 5-13 in the Big Ten, Iowa fired head coach Todd Lickliter. The program was in shambles, not having made the NCAA tournament since 2006 and not winning a game in the tournament in over a decade, in 1999.
On March 28, when the Siena program was becoming one of the mid-major powerhouses and had a winning culture made, Siena head coach Fran McCaffrey left the team to become the coach at Iowa. In five years in Loudonville, McCaffrey had a 112-51 record, including going 77-26 in his final three years, with a conference record of 46-8 during that same time period.
On April 7, Siena promoted top assistant coach Mitch Buonaguro to replace McCaffrey. Buonaguro was a basketball lifer, who had previously been the head coach at Fairfield and had been an assistant at big-name schools like Villanova and Texas A&M. He was Villanova’s assistant when they shocked the world in 1985 and won the National Championship as an 8-seed.
Buonaguro’s first year wasn’t too bad. Siena went 13-18, despite losing three key members on their MAAC title teams, Alex Franklin, Ronald Moore and Edwin Ubiles, to graduation the previous year. After Buonaguro’s first year, Siena lost Clarence Jackson and Ryan Rossiter. This was the end of winning that Siena had been used to. Year two went a little better, with the team going 14-17. They went 8-10 in conference play both years. In 2011-2012, year two, they reached the semifinals of the MAAC tournament. Buonaguro’s third year was when the team took a turn for the worse, and it got ugly. They failed to win 10 games for the first time since the 2004-2005 season, the year before McCaffrey took over. They went 8-24, 4-14 in MAAC play, and were bounced in the quarterfinals of the MAAC tournament.
On March 12, 2013, the Buonaguro era came to an end as he was fired by the school.
Something that could be to blame was Buonaguro’s recruiting hype surrounding two players coming from Africa who were supposed to be stars, Lionel Gomis and Imoh Silas. Neither amounted to much. Gomis left the team during the 2011-2012 season, and Silas played sparingly until graduating last spring.
Siena conducted a national search to find their new guy, and landed on Loyola head coach Jimmy Patsos. He was hired on April 2 of 2013, beating out Robert Morris head coach Andrew Toole and then-VCU associate head coach Mike Rhoades, who is now the head coach at Rice.
Patsos’ biggest project going in was to convince Troy High School product Javion Ogunyemi, who was recruited by Buonaguro, to stay with the team. Ogunyemi ultimately decided to stay with the program, and the program is surely glad he did.
During his introductory pep rally, the fiery coach promised a young fan that Siena would beat UAlbany that year. While he didn’t follow through on that promise, you can probably be sure that he would take what ended up happening. Siena won their first National Tournament in Division 1 program history, winning the 2014 College Basketball Invitational in his first year, taking out big names like Penn State and Illinois State before taking down Fresno State two games to one in the best-of-three series to win the title. Siena was not back to being nationally relevant yet, but they sure were getting close.
Siena took a step back in 2014-2015, going 11-20. They had their second 20+ win season in three years in 2015-2016 and went back to the CBI, but lost in the first round to Morehead State.
Sunday’s win over Monmouth was arguably the biggest the program has seen in nearly a decade. Tonight, the Saints will play for a MAAC title for the first time in seven years, taking on Iona. If they make the NCAA tournament, it truly represents the rebuild that Jimmy Patsos has had to make over the last four years, and he has done a great job. Regardless of whether they win or lose tonight, this game means that the program is back and they’re here to stay, at least for a while.
