A Year Later, Gaels Look Forward to Success
A much-chronicled story last season was the struggle of Iona. A year earlier, the Gaels won the MAAC Tournament to reach the NCAA Tournament. But last season, they went from one extreme to the other, going from the postseason to winning just two games all season long. Jeff Ruland had his contract bought out at the end of the season, ending his tenure at his alma mater.
With their 87-81 win at New Hampshire on Saturday, this season’s team has already surpassed the win total of last year. They now stand 3-7, and topping last season’s win total might be nice, but they aren’t content with just that as one might imagine. They want a lot more.
“It’s still not as much as we need. We aren’t just happy with the third win because we won two last year,” said junior forward Gary Springer, whose father was a star at the school in the early 1980s. “We’re trying to do it big this year in the MAAC conference, so this is just a stepping stone for us.”
The desire to win a MAAC championship might seem crazy to fans, but last season hasn’t changed the competitive nature of athletes and certainly not this group of them. This team has that as their expectation, and new head coach Kevin Willard set that right from the beginning.
“When I came in, it was almost like, I didn’t know where their confidence was and I didn’t know where they stood, just from the fact that they went through such a tough year,” said Willard, who had previously been an assistant at Louisville and is the son of Holy Cross head coach Ralph Willard. “I looked around the room and I said, there’s no reason, if you work hard, that you can’t win a MAAC championship. Our goal is to win a championship.”
Going through a season like last season is never easy. As they were the last Division I team to get their first win, there was a good deal of negative publicity that came with it. They were much talked about as the team trying not to go 0-for-the-season. While most figured they would have a hard time repeating their success of the prior season after losing so many integral contributors to the team, including the school’s second all-time leading scorer in Steve Burtt, Jr. (behind only his father), no one figured this would be the result.
Aside from the obvious difficulties on a team that wins just twice all season, a number of players came from winning programs in addition to the holdovers from the team a year earlier that won the MAAC. Senior guard Jerome Camper, for example, played for a team that went 33-2 in junior college a year earlier. Senior forward Dexter Gray, who transferred from St. John’s, played his high school ball at powerhouse Mt. Vernon High School.
The Gaels are now a more experienced team, although they have just two seniors. The feeling is that this team is more focused on their end goal and a more together unit. With a new coach and a new style of play, there is going to be a learning curve and some bumps in the road. Those have certainly come thus far, with turnovers being a primary concern as they average over 20 per game. But they have won three of four now, and Willard likes what he sees of late.
“We’re starting to play a little better, get a little more confidence and a little more comfortable in what I want them to do and what I know they can do,” Willard said after they shot 60 percent from the field in Saturday’s win.
Willard has definitely put this team through its paces. They practice very early in the morning – 6 A.M. many days – and if a player doesn’t get up, he’s out there the next day at 12:01 A.M. Come game time, he likes to change defenses often, noting that while he will have them press, they’ll do it selectively and mix their defenses, which challenges the players to switch up on the fly. He’s seen them respond at every turn and is certainly satisfied with the effort from that end. The players see a difference in how hard they are pushed as well.
The Gaels are an athletic bunch, which should enable them to play the faster style Willard wants to play. Even in the frontcourt, where Gray leads the way, they are more athletic than they are big and strong. Seven-footer John Kelly has started four games, but averages under 13 minutes per game. On Saturday, they were content to play 6’6″ junior Devon Clarke 28 minutes and Gray 29 minutes, while Springer, who missed a month with an ankle injury, played 20 minutes. It wouldn’t be a surprise if this continues from here on out unless injuries strike.
A year after a forgettable season, the Gaels are aiming high. They aren’t setting the world on fire, but they have played better of late and look to be well-balanced. There’s some good talent, and they feel like the situation is much better all in all. The end results should continue to bear out that last year was very much an aberration.
