Hi. I haven’t posted in a while! How’s it going? What’d I miss? Let me just check in on the ‘ole Alma Mater’s cherished basketball program real quick before I start this blog…
If you’re the type of person that visits a fan-run blog of an eliminated team during the opening day of the NCAA Tournament (happy holidays, by the way), then you already know exactly what’s going on.
Siena has fired its men’s college basketball coach, alum and local product Carmen Maciariello, after five years at the helm.
What led to this, you might ask if you haven’t paid attention to Siena hoops since February 12th, 2023?
Story time! Gather ’round folks.
On February 12th, 2023 Siena bested Marist to reach a 17-9 record, bringing them within a half game of first place with plenty of calendar left to secure a MAAC regular season title. This was especially encouraging considering Sophomore phenom Javian McCollum had just came back from missing a handful of games where Siena had sputtered, so it looked like the Saints were locked in for another (regular season) title bid.
The Saints would go on to lose the next six games of the season which included the opening round MAAC tournament game, ending the promising 2022-2023 season with an incredible whimper.
What transpired after the ’22-’23 season was significant roster turnover, although not unprecedented considering we’re in the midst of what I’ll call the Player Empowerment Era with virtually no transfer restrictions plus NIL incentives. Despite seeing an outflow of talent in previous seasons, Coach Carm and staff had proven to be reliably capable at replacing it via a combination of high school recruits and transfers. Certainly this year would be no different, right?
…Right?
I’m so wrong I don’t even have the mindset to look up a good “wrong” gif.
The 2023-2024 roster looked…different. The staff surrounding Coach Carm looked different. Pre-season expectations (selected 4th in the MAAC pre-season coaches poll) remained high. Maybe a little too high.
Siena went on to a 4-28 record. Let me just repeat this once more, for emphasis: Siena College Men’s Basketball, in the present-day MAAC, went 4-28. Aside from the dreadful record, there were some instances of gaslighting supporters (see coach comments made during Sunshine Slam), physical altercations with players during games, and potentially conflicting stories on why certain players weren’t playing.
I promise I won’t belabor the point, but Siena ended the 2023-2024 season as the #357th team in KenPom. That’s out of 362 total teams in Division 1. Independent Houston Christian, a school I honest-to-god (unintended pun) did not know had a Division 1 basketball program, finished ahead of us. LeMoyne, a comparable school to Siena in terms of academic profile, size, and style, in its first ever season as a D1 team, finished 15-17 in the NEC, which landed them at 300 in KenPom. Our four wins came against teams ranked 221, 269, 337, and 347 in KenPom. These advanced statistical rankings aren’t the end-all-be-all of course, but they’re painting a pretty consistent picture here.
In my mind, despite having four consecutive winning seasons record-wise prior to his last, there was not enough goodwill established that would have allowed Carm Maciariello to keep his job after this season. This was not a down year/rebuilding year/blip on the radar. A rebuilding year is going 10-20. This was a historically awful Siena basketball season.
I don’t say that lightly! I was a senior at Siena during the 2004-2005 season, Rob Lanier’s final year as head coach, when we went 6-24. A different time in my life sure, but still, I attended every home game that season. Despite the sloppy in-bounds plays & disjointed style, that team had talent that would occasionally flash, and it made them bad but watchable.
This past season’s team was the first time ever that I was truly apathetic towards Siena basketball. Sure, I watched some. I attended a game or two. But I couldn’t tell you how many times I turned the game off at halftime, or didn’t even bother putting it on. I’m saying this as someone who has a Siena basketball fan blog for god’s sakes.
So in the end, Carm leaves Siena with a 68-72 career record, going an abysmal 1-4 in the MAAC tournament. While I understand that MAAC record comes with a few asterisks that I won’t get into now, it’s still critical to acknowledge that Siena never even played in a MAAC semi-final under this regime.
I don’t think there was another path forward than the one we’re on now. Clean slate, both on the coaching staff and assuredly on the roster as well (I’ll put the over/under on returning players at 2.5). I will say this – as terrible as this season was, it will not define Carmen Maciariello as a person or coach. Rob Lanier went on to have a very successful assistant coaching career after Siena before finally getting another head job, taking Georgia State to the NCAA’s, and is now at the helm for a very strong SMU program. (EDIT: Can’t make this up, Rob Lanier was surprisingly fired after a 20 win season at SMU mere minutes after I wrote this. Sorry Rob!) There’s a future for Coach Carm in this sport, but it’s undeniable that future should no longer be leading Siena’s basketball program.
UP NEXT – Coaching Carousels & Player Portals! Or maybe I’ll take another entire year off from posting, who knows?!
LSI - Siena Saints Hoops Blog 