Oct. 17, 2002
March 2, 2002.
If ever there was a moment of truth for the 2001-2002 Siena College men's basketball team, this was it.
With their backs to the wall, the Saints found themselves trailing #2 seed Marist 29-11 late in the first half in the quarterfinals of the 2002 MAAC Tournament. The majority of the hometown Siena fans in Pepsi Arena were stunned and debating their off-season plans. All but the most loyal, ardent Siena fans had given up hope, and many of those were beginning to push the panic button.
But there was a group of 14 men who refused to throw in the towel. It just wasn't their way. Led by first year floor leader Rob Lanier, the Saints brought the Pepsi Arena crowd to their feet as senior Dwayne Archbold scored a career-high 36 points to fuel a Siena comeback and an 82-76 victory.
The Red Foxes didn't know what hit them, and the rest of the league would soon join them. The victory created a Siena monster that would not subside until two days later, as the Saints tore through Fairfield in the semifinals, 83-63, and put an emphatic exclamation point on a surreal MAAC Tournament run with a 92-77 victory over Niagara before a national television audience on ESPN. Archbold captured MAAC Tournament MVP honors by scoring 111 points in four days.
"What can you say? The kid's special," Lanier told the Associated Press. "He's a great player and I love him."
Just four days before, Siena entered tournament play with a three-game losing streak, a paltry 12-18 record and a #7 seed in the 10-team tournament. Other than having the tournament in the familiar confines of the Pepsi Arena (where they had never won the Championship before), the team had little else to hang its hopes on. No MAAC team had previously captured the tournament title and NCAA berth from the play-in round. Siena changed all that, and earned the program's third NCAA Tournament berth in school history (1989, 1999).
At this point, Siena had become the state's media darling, as the team found itself with a week off to get ready for an opponent it would not know. After the Saints' players and fans gathered for a Selection Sunday party on March 9, Siena learned that it would have to enter the NCAA opening round game and travel to a neutral site in Dayton, Ohio to take on SWAC Champion Alcorn State.
Never mind that Siena was the only team in the 65-team NCAA Tournament field with a losing record. They were on their hottest winning streak of the year and they were playing with poise, swagger and attitude.
Playing as the marquee game on a Tuesday night before a mostly neutral crowd of 8,681 and the eyes of the college basketball world on ESPN, Siena found itself in a dogfight. In a game that featured 20 lead changes and 12 ties, the Saints rallied from a 4-point deficit by outscoring Alcorn State 21-13 in the game's final 6:45, and posting an 81-77 victory.
For the first time since 1955, the NCAA Tournament would have a team with a losing record win a game. At 17-18, Siena was on a roll and was certainly not playing like its record would indicate.
Prosper Karangwa showed Saints' fans what he is capable of, as the junior scored a career-high 31 points to fuel the victory, including a 3-pointer that put Siena ahead to stay 72-70 with 3:08 left.
"You don't try to look for that shot," Karangwa said. "You just let it come to you. It was a random shot."
"I went up to him and said, 'That's what I've been waiting for," Archbold added. "He can take it easy sometimes, but I knew he could play like this."
"A week ago, we were left for dead," Lanier said. "It's quite a contrast."
Quite a contrast, indeed. The game caught the attention of Siena's next opponent, #1-ranked and East Region top seed Maryland (26-4). The game was to be played at the MCI Center in Washington, so the Saints would have to deal with not only a top-ranked team, but also a hostile Terrapin crowd.
"Nobody expects us to win this game, nobody expects us to be here, nobody expects us to even advance out of the first round of our conference tournament," Archbold told the AP. "We heard a lot of things about our season that weren't true, and hopefully we prove everyone wrong again."
Having been battled tested by a program-record 30-game regular season that included the toughest non-conference schedule in school history, Siena blocked out all the peripheral distractions and gave Maryland one of its toughest contests in the tournament.
After grabbing an early first-half lead, Siena hung around for the entire contest before the eventual national champions pulled out an 85-70 victory before a capacity crowd of 18,770 fans on CBS Television. The Saints ultimately ended up giving Maryland one of its toughest games of the Tournament.
"We didn't back down from the challenge of playing a number one seed in their backyard," Lanier said in the postgame press conference. "We weren't just happy to show up. We wanted to show Maryland and the rest of the country what we were capable of."
The loss to Maryland meant the end of a long, winding road that marked the 2001-2002 campaign. The beginning of the year saw Siena open up by competing in the Las Vegas Tournament by traveling to Big East foe Providence. In his first game as a head coach, Lanier witnessed his Saints fall to the Friars, 79-54.
Breaks didn't go Siena's way in November and December, as the Saints muddled through two three-game losing streaks in that period. A 77-69 loss at Marist on Dec. 6 gave Siena a 2-7 record. A few points here or there, and Siena could easily have been 6-3, as four of the team's first seven losses were by nine points or fewer.
Archbold helped Siena snap the losing streak as he scored 47 points in consecutive victories over Niagara (77-65) and Hartford (68-52). The streak came to an end just before Christmas, as Siena closed out the 2001 portion of the schedule with defeats to St. Bonaventure (78-74), Rice (71-60) and Xavier (68-59) for its third three-game losing streak of the season.
Having rung in 2002 with a 4-10 mark, Siena entered the meat of its conference play having completed an extraordinarily tough non-conference schedule. The experience paid off right away, as Siena jumped out to a 5-1 MAAC record with consecutive victories over Iona (79-70 in overtime), Rider (64-63), Loyola (82-76 in triple overtime) and Saint Peter's (73-59). As usual, Archbold led the Saints in scoring in three of the four victories. The 2001-2002 season saw the senior guard from Brooklyn become the 27th player in school history to score more than 1,000 points, finishing fifth on the school's career scoring chart with 1,644 points. He led the Saints in scoring in 27 of their school-record 36 contests.
After being edged 69-64 by Manhattan in a rare home loss on Jan. 17, the Saints traveled to Buffalo and fell to 8-12 after a 76-68 loss to Canisius. Siena would proceed to go 4-3 in its next seven contests, capturing home wins against Iona (79-71), Canisius (63-43) and Loyola (68-58). The road was rather unkind to the Green and Gold though, as the Saints' lone road victory in that span came at MAAC cellar dweller Saint Peter's (73-55) on Valentine's Day.
Possessing a 12-15 mark, Siena had a chance to finish the regular season at .500 by closing its regular season with three victories. That would not happen, as three-point home losses to Fairfield (60-57) and Marist (60-57) bookmarked a disappointing six-point setback at eventual MAAC regular-season champion Rider (62-56).
The losses turned out not to matter. Fortunately for Siena, there was a chance for the ultimate redemption of its season at the MAAC Tournament.
All the Saints needed was four victories in four days. Playing against the odds, 14 men decided they didn't care what anyone else thought, then went out on the court and proved their doubters wrong.
Mission accomplished.
~Courtney Erickson; Special to SienaSaints.com
