Saturday, March 7, 2009

Saints and Stags: MAAC Semifinal

ALBANY - Kenny Hasbrouck said he airballed the first two shots in warmup, saying he wasn't quite used to seeing no curtain covering part of the upper deck of the arena in downtown Albany, but that certainly didn't slow him once the game started. 

Hasbrouck made his first shot, a deep 3-pointer and from there scored 16 points in helping to lead the Saints into the semifinals. 

"Once we put the ball in his hands, he got real aggressive offensively," said Siena coach Fran McCaffery. 

Hasbrouck played a lot at the point in the first half because of the foul trouble of Ronald Moore, but ran the offense effectively. 

While McCaffery was quick to praise the defense, Hasbrouck wouldn't go as far to say that all of the worries were taken care of because of this one good performance. 

"If we do it two days in a row, I think it would," Hasbrouck said. "We have to keep it up."

If you thought you saw mohawks on Alex Franklin and Clarence Jackson, you were correct. 

"I just wanted to try something different," said Franklin, whose mohawk wasn't affected by the hard foul from Robert Goldsberry. "(Jackson) and I were the only ones who followed through with it though."

Neither McCaffery nor a Siena player would come right out and say their play was different after the hard foul, but here was there responses. 

"A little bit," said McCaffery when asked if the hard foul provided any kind of a spark to his team. 

"A little bit," echoed Franklin only moments later. 

Siena beat Fairfield both times this season, but McCaffery was quick to praise both the Stags head coach Ed Cooley and their players, following the win. 

"I think Ed Cooley has done as fine of a coaching job as there is in the country," McCaffery said. 

Cooley has had to deal with losing preseason first team selection Jonathan Han and also with an assortment of injuries. 

"I give a lot of credit to their players for continuing to believe when it would have been real easy to pack it in," McCaffery continued. 

There's no doubt Siena will be focused and prepared to return to the championship game. 

"They played us hard both games and we just have to come out and do what we have to do to get the job done," said freshman Owen Wignot

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home