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PRESEASON COACHES’ POLL
- Siena
- Iona
- Monmouth
- Saint Peter’s
- Manhattan
- Niagara
- Quinnipiac
- Fairfield
- Marist
- Canisius
- Rider
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON 1ST TEAM
Jalen Pickett – Siena (Preseason Player of the Year)
Manny Campber – Siena
Deion Hammond – Monmouth
Marcus Hammond – Niagara
KC Ndefo – Saint Peter’s
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON 2ND TEAM
Asante Gist – Iona
Majesty Brandon – Canisius
Warren Williams – Manhattan
Isaiah Ross – Iona
Tyrese Williams – Quinnipiac
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON 3RD TEAM
Jacob Rigoni – Quinnipiac
Jesus Cruz – Fairfield
Doug Edert – Saint Peter’s
Raheem Solomon – Niagara
Daryl Banks – Saint Peter’s
COMMENTS FROM DAVID
-Siena is pretty much the obvious favorite to win the league. They have three starters back from a team that finished in first place and won 20 games a year ago, including two of the better players in the league in Jalen Pickett and Manny Camper. They did have a big of a roster overhaul, but they have enough in place from a year ago to be very good.
-Legendary coach and a Hoops HD favorite Tim Cluess is gone from Iona. Iona dominated the league (well, at least the conference tournament) for the entire latter part of his tenure there, and we will miss him. I know they hired another fantastic coach in Rick Pitino and he’ll bring more national attention to Iona than Cluess ever could. But, at least as far as I’m concerned, they are also not nearly as easy to like. That aside, the Gaels have (not surprisingly) had an influx of talent in terms of JUCO transfers and good looking freshmen, so this team should drastically improved from last year’s 12 win season
-Monmouth has a strong backcourt that’s led by Deion Hammond and looks to have some pretty good newcomers as well. I guess we’ll see if they have enough pieces to challenge for the top of the league.
-Head coach Shaheen Holloway did a tremendous job in his second season at Saint Mary’s last year with 18 wins and a second place finish in the conference, but with just two starters back they could once again be in rebuild mode.
-There wasn’t much preseason love for Canisius, but I really like head coach Reggie Witherspoon and think with some of the experience they have coming back we could see some improvement this year.
-Niagara has all five starers back, and while they won just 12 games last year, they were playing some pretty good ball down the stretch and the experience they have should make them better this year.
-Quinnipiac has some key players back from a team that was .500 a year ago.
-Fairfield has three starters back from a team that was tough defensively last year so we may see some improvement out of them.
-Hard to know what to make of Manhattan. They had several players transfer out that would have been contributors this year had they stuck around, so we’ll see how they do after the roster overhaul.
-Marist returns four starters, but I don’t know how good that is considering how much they struggled last year.
-Rider is starting completely over having lost all five starters from last year