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Siena Ready For A Second Shot At History

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 16, 2009

It's NCAA Tournament time. The brackets are out and I couldn't help but smile when I saw the No. 9 seed in the Midwest Region.

It's our friend Siena.

The Saints of Siena College, from the tiny school from Loudonville, N.Y., came to Tampa last season for the NCAA Tournament, a No. 13 seed filled with good talent, big hearts and bigger dreams.

Remember? They upset Vanderbilt, then fell to Villanova, and every bit of it was all so new to them, all so grand. It was everything this tournament can be and always will be. We just fell in love with them. So we thought we'd check back in.

"I wish we were coming to Tampa again," Siena coach Fran McCaffery said. "You're our adopted sister city. We wish we could have stayed another week."

They were a bonafide Cinderella last season, but clearly they weren't through with making memories, not these Saints.

So they went out this season and went 26-7, won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, then won the MAAC Tournament, too, which they probably didn't even need to do to make the dance this time, given their RPI (24) and strength of non-conference schedule. Nobody had a tougher one than the Saints.

"We took on everyone," McCaffery said.

Not that they beat them, but they never backed down. There was Pittsburgh at Pittsburgh and Kansas at Kansas. There was a return to Florida and an Orlando tournament and meetings with Oklahoma State and Tennessee.

"It's a measure of respect for the program to be given the ninth seed," McCaffery said. "People are much more aware of us. The question for us is to stay there. Every mid-major program wants to become Gonzaga, but it's hard, because everyone wants to do the same thing."

It won't be easy. The Saints' reward for being the No. 9 seed in the Midwest is an opening round game against Ohio State in Dayton, which is in Ohio, the Tribune has learned. Oh, and if Siena wins that game, they get Louisville, the top overall seed in the tournament.

"Obviously, that will be a little different than playing Vanderbilt in Tampa," McCaffery said. "A lot of people were kind of rooting for us. That won't be the case this year. We'll travel well, there'll be some noisy New Yorkers, but I don't think we'll have 13,000 of them."

The Saints returned four starters from last year's tournament team. Leading the way is MAAC Player of the Year and MAAC Tournament MVP Kenny Hasbrouck, one of the best all-around guards in the nation. He dropped 30 points on Vanderbilt last March.

And they sophomore big man Ryan Rossiter, who was a bean pole in Tampa last March, but began to emerge on a summer trip the Saints made to Italy last summer, where they played five games against professional teams in 13 days _ and took on everything else, too, from the Vatican to Michelangelo's statue of David.

"Imagine that, the Vatican and Tampa in one year," Mccaffery said. "How do you beat that?"

He let out a cackle, the same one we remember from last year, along with McCaffery's wife, Margaret, shepherding their four young children to practice. The Siena family was all over Tampa last March.

"The beauty of it is we got to stay," McCaffery said. "We had a ton of fans come, and we were all at the same hotel … It became a Siena hotel. It was really an exciting opportunity to be together. The weather was great, we played well. It was all we could hope for."

And more.

Siena didn't just put itself on the map in Tampa, it got a player out of the deal.

His name is Conner Fenlon and his dad, Joe, is boys basketball coach at Tampa Prep. When the brackets came out last season, Joe Fenlon reached for the phone to ask Fran McCaffery if Siena wanted to practice at Tampa Prep. He and McCaffery go way back, Fran having recruited Tampa Prep.

"I didn't know anything about Siena." Conner said. "But I fell in love with them when they were here."

One day after Siena practiced, Conner, who played point guard for his dad, was shooting around. McCaffery asked Joe Fenlon what Connor's plans were for college. Joe said Conner was thinking about Florida State, where he was in line for a job as basketball manager.

"Why not us?" Fran asked Joe.

And so it was that Conner Fenlon came to Siena as a walk-on. He played in six games for the Saints this season. He joined the family.

"He's really been great for our program," McCaffery said. "Connor is just a delightful person _ and he can play."

And now he's going to the NCAA Tournament.

"It's like a dream," Conner Fenlon said.

Those are our Saints.

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