Monmouth’s many leaders guide program to best start in history
It’s Monmouth Week here at Guarden State, in part because bigger-name schools are not playing, but more importantly because the Hawks deserve your attention.
It’s Monmouth Week here at Guarden State, in part because bigger-name schools are not playing, but more importantly because the Hawks deserve your attention.
Only a handful of Division I team have reached 10 wins so far, and you can count Monmouth among them after its 77-66 win over Colgate on Sunday. At 10-2 (2-0 in the MAAC), Monmouth is off to its best start in program history, with stellar road wins at Cincinnati, Pitt and Yale on the resume.
It isn’t easy to win games when you aren’t playing your best basketball. Colgate made a bevy of threes early in order to tie Monmouth 36-36 at halftime. To pull away, the Hawks played the roles they know best: George Papas scored 30 points, one shy of his season high; Shavar Reynolds posted nine assists, his most in a game with Monmouth; Walker Miller and Nikkei Rutty combined for 15 rebounds.
Iona was the preseason favorite in the MAAC and now sports a 9-2 (2-0) record, a half-game behind Monmouth, for what it’s worth. We all know the league record ultimately rules the day. The Gaels, with their upset of Alabama in tow, are seen as a particularly good bet in the mid-major world. If I were tasked to name only one worthy challenger to them for the conference title, it has to be Monmouth. (They’ll meet on the afternoon of Jan. 9 in West Long Branch, then again Feb. 13 at Iona.)
Monmouth’s hot start is bound to attract attention – from casual fans in the community, from college hoops watchers working on their bracketology way too early, from media types like me. In the sports business, teams speak a ton about “distractions” coming from “the outside.” If you’re in Alabama in particular, Nick Saban might have convinced you to see the media as servers of “rat poison,” whether the Crimson Tide are shellacking everybody or (gasp) actually lose a game.
King Rice recognizes something more fundamental about how this world works. The Monmouth coach knows his players may or may not be “reading their press clippings,” as the saying goes. But even if he cautions them away from doing that, other people in their lives are inevitably going to get in their ears.
“Everybody knows what to do when you lose some games, because everybody pulls together. But we rarely talk about how you deal with when you’re having success, and we’ve been having a lot of success so far this year,” Rice said. “Things change for you when you’re having success, because now everybody’s paying attention. Now your girlfriend has an opinion on how you’re doing; your mom and dad want to tell you you need more shots; your friends from home are like, ‘Why does he shoot and not you?’
“And that kind of creeped into our team this week. And it’s a credit to George and Walker and Shavar and Marcus (McClary) and my seniors for getting my group back together and saying, ‘Guys, that’s not who we are. Let’s not let outside influences mess up this beautiful thing we’ve got going on inside this circle.’”
As Rice touched on the last time I saw Monmouth in person, he strongly prefers to let his upperclassmen set the locker room culture. That’s exactly the type of team he has this season. KenPom rates Monmouth as the eighth-most experienced team in the country this season. Weighted by minutes played, Hawks players have an average of 2.75 years of NCAA experience under their belts.
(That’s especially noteworthy considering the extra year of eligibility many players were granted due to the pandemic, leading a number of guys around the country to come back for their fifth or sixth years on campus.)
Monmouth’s final nonconference opponent is no slouch. Hofstra took Houston (ranked in the Top 25 all season) to overtime on opening night, nearly beat Maryland on the road and finally broke through Saturday with a big upset of then-No. 24 Arkansas, 89-81. Five players average double figures for a team that ranks T-37th in the nation in scoring offense (80.3 ppg) and seventh in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.71).
It’ll be another big test Wednesday for the Hawks, who have passed most of their exams so far. Check back Thursday morning for my story from West Long Branch.
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Thanks for reading. Time to hit the glass:
You probably remember from Friday’s edition that my original plan was to cover Rutgers-Rider this weekend. That, like so many other sporting events and shows in and around New York, was affected by the spread of the Omicron variant. Here’s a key difference: Though it’s a nonconference game, Rutgers and Rider will attempt to reschedule it, rather than wipe it from the slate entirely. They can afford to do this. It’s an easy trip for Rider to make up from Lawrenceville, Rider only has one more game scheduled (tonight) before resuming conference play Jan. 2 and Rutgers only has two more on the schedule (Dec. 23 and 29) in that same span.
Meanwhile, Seton Hall is accepting a conference loss to St. John’s in lieu of playing tonight, because the Pirates don’t have enough healthy players to compete. Seton Hall remains 9-1 in the eyes of the NCAA, and I wish clerically there were a clearer way to display this team’s record the rest of the season. Does an asterisk do the trick? 9-1 (0-1*)?
Here’s the next thing to watch out for this week: Seton Hall’s next game is a road trip to DePaul on Thursday, but DePaul also had to call off a game over the weekend due to COVID-19. This can go a number of ways. Hall could be healthy and ready to field a team, but DePaul isn’t ready in time and the game is canceled – or vice versa. But if neither team has seven healthy players ready to go, instead of merely rescheduling the game, both teams receive a conference loss, a scenario I think everybody wants to avoid.
I managed to see a lot of the Saint Peter’s-Stony Brook game on TV Saturday evening. Without recapping a rather busy end-of-game sequence blow by blow, Stony Brook held on for a 64-63 win after the Peacocks led by seven at halftime. That dropped Saint Peter’s to 3-6 (1-1 MAAC) with winless Fairleigh Dickinson coming up Wednesday. KC Ndefo, the MAAC preseason player of the year, has been just fine. I’ll always love a shot-blocking specialist, but his scoring and rebounding averages (8.3, 4.9) are way down from his junior year. Ndefo had 13 points on 6-of-10 shooting and five blocks against Stony Brook.