Season preview: This time, MAAC favorite Rider is embracing the pressure
Season preview: This time, MAAC favorite Rider is embracing the pressure
Two seasons after Saint Peter’s magical run, Mervin James and the Broncs could put a New Jersey school back atop the MAAC.
ATLANTIC CITY – Kevin Baggett stepped to the dais in a meeting room inside Ocean Casino Resort and thanked the assembled coaches for voting Rider No. 1 in the MAAC preseason poll.
Baggett’s Broncs earned eight of 11 first-place votes and were the only team with multiple players on the preseason all-MAAC first team. Forward Mervin James, who averaged 12.9 points and 6.8 rebounds last season, was named Preseason Player of the Year.
“It’s an honor to be in front of you,” Baggett said. “I want to thank all of those coaches that voted on us to be preseason No. 1. I already have a tough schedule, so I want to thank you for the pressures that come with it.”
It played to polite laughter in the room. It was a joke, and yet it wasn’t.
Rider has been in this position before, as the unanimous preseason favorite in 2018-19. And in Baggett’s earnest self-evaluation, he didn’t handle it well at the time. That had an impact on the court: Rider went 11-7 in the MAAC, received the No. 4 seed in the conference tournament and lost its first game.
“I think it was the pressure every day of dealing with it, and that pressure kind of came down and went down to the players and to the coaches,” Baggett later told me. “This time, like I said, just embracing it. Challenging myself, challenging us all to be better and just enjoying it.”
Entering his 12th season, Baggett is the longest-tenured head coach in the MAAC by a longshot – that’s not even counting his years as a Rider assistant reaching back to 2006. He returns three starters while 2023 champion Iona is left to rebuild.
For a program that has reached the NCAA Tournament three times, and not since 1994, is this the moment for the Broncs to do what Saint Peter’s did two years ago and take top billing in the MAAC?
If so, they’ll need to replace dynamic guard Dwight Murray Jr. in more ways than one. The Broncs will miss not only Murray’s production (15.7 ppg, 5.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 1.4 steals, 40% from three last year), but also his leadership.
Murray and James played at Pebblebrook High School in Georgia together after James came over from his native U.S. Virgin Islands. They went their separate ways before reuniting when James transferred to Rider in 2021-22.
“I would say DJ, he played a big role in the Rider program,” James told me. “He was one of them guys that you see, he could get anybody to move just off his energy and how he talked to people, just know everything he’s saying is coming from a good place.”
“Mervin learned from his best friend, Dwight Murray, how to be a leader,” Baggett added. “… He’s put all the work in. He’s been a great leader, he’s been a great extension of me.”
Murray helped James assimilate into the program when he transferred in from North Alabama. It no doubt feels different for him without Murray around.
“Yeah, it does feel weird, but then it gives me that sense of where I need to lock back in and focus. Focus on myself and on my team,” James said.
James was surprised to learn he was chosen as Preseason POY. Considering his returning production, perhaps he shouldn’t be. Looking just at MAAC regular-season play, James’ numbers rise to 13.3 points and 7.3 rebounds per game while shooting about 50% from the floor.
Baggett said the 6-foot-7, 215-pound forward received professional offers when the Broncs took their overseas trip last year. But James wanted to finish his degree first. His twin brother Marvin will beat him to it by one semester at the University of West Georgia; they’ll be the first two in their family to graduate college.
There’s another reason to come back: bringing Rider a MAAC title and finally reaching March Madness.
“(I want to) show everybody that just because I have this preseason award, I don’t want nobody to feel like I’m bigger than nobody on the team,” James said. “I’m big on telling my team: ‘If y’all see me doing something that I’m not supposed to be doing, y’all have the right to tell me.’ I don’t want nobody to feel like I’m bigger than nobody. Yeah, ’cause that’s not how this works. Everybody has to be on the same page and everybody has to have the same agenda for us to go at the end to where we want to be at, and that’s the MAAC championship.”
The MAAC is known for its parity. Most of the past five years, the last-place team still would win six or seven league games. Marist was 11th of 11 last year only to beat Manhattan, Quinnipiac and Saint Peter’s in a row in the tournament before losing to Rick Pitino’s Iona in the title game.
Fairleigh Dickinson’s Tobin Anderson took over at Iona with Pitino moving on to St. John’s. While Anderson’s coaching credentials are beyond reproach now, the departures of both Pitino and most of last year’s roster loosens the Gaels’ death grip on the top of the league.
And Rider is hardly the only team eyeing a move into the driver’s seat. Saint Peter’s figures to improve in Bashir Mason’s second year as head coach after a 14-18 season last year.
“Recruits that we’ve added I think are longer, more athletic, talented, which helps our defensive style, and our scoring as well,” Mason said. “Staff’s a year better. Seeing a lot of growth in the guys that returned from Year 1 to Year 2, which kind of gives an indication that hey, the program is working.”
The Peacocks were voted 10th in the preseason poll, but remember that parity we were talking about? It manifested itself again on March 8 at Boardwalk Hall, when No. 10 seed Saint Peter’s stunned No. 2 Rider 70-62 in the MAAC quarterfinals. It was proof for Mason and his staff that the culture they were instilling can do big things.
“In my opinion, Rider was right there neck and neck with Iona in terms of being one of the top teams in the league that could’ve represented the conference in the NCAA Tournament,” Mason said. “And the fact that we were able to beat them in the most important time of the year, you know, everybody kind of playing their best basketball, says a lot about our program and where we got to at that moment.
“That was the catapult for us. This year it’s getting a step further than we did a year ago.”
Rider has seen both sides of the coin in just two years. Before the early upset in 2023, the No. 9 Broncs shocked No. 1 Iona in the quarterfinals in March 2022.
The players who return from those squads – James, preseason first-team All-MAAC guard Allen Powell, Corey McKeithan – learned what they needed to learn from those two contrasting March experiences.
“What I learned these last two years is that we need everybody, everybody bought in on the same agenda,” James said. “I would say that down the line, we need to lock in on the little things. The little things like rebounding, loose balls, not turning the ball over, just making that extra pass to the teammate and having the confidence that my teammate is gonna knock down that shot. We’re big on positive feedback this year, you feel me, giving everybody that positive reinforcement they need to build them up and not tear them down.”
“Any team can win this thing, as you saw last year,” Baggett said. “We finished second and then Marist ends up in the championship. Normally the No. 1 preseason – I hope this will not be the case this year, but the No. 1 doesn’t always win it. Just control what you can control, get better every day and be ready in 146 days to compete when it comes time to come back here for a title.”
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Hello, and thanks for stopping by. It’s been a jam-packed week of travel for me, and as a result you can look forward to Princeton, Monmouth and women’s basketball season previews in the next few editions of Guarden State.
For now, some more notes and quotes on Rider and Saint Peter’s to clean the glass this Thursday morning:
I asked James who was going to surprise us this season and he had a big smile as he answered. “Corey McKeithan. Corey brings the defense, the full 94-feet defense. On the ball, whatever you need. He’s gonna bring his shot-making, he’s gonna have the ball in his hands and he’s gonna run the offense for us. Just big plays by him this year, controlling the tempo of the basketball game.” The third-year guard will be called upon to help Powell and others work the backcourt after Murray’s departure.
You figure transfer T.J. Weeks will also play a key role after starting at UMass for the past two years. As a freshman in 2019-2020, Weeks shot 6-for-6 from the arc in a win over Rider, and that certainly didn’t leave Baggett’s memory. Rider assistant Geoff Arnold coached Weeks’ dad Tyrone Weeks at UMass; his younger brother Tyriek Weeks has also transferred in. “That’s neat. It brings a different type of chemistry already with the two siblings in your program,” Baggett said. “So we’re happy to have him and happy to have his experience.”
As for the Peacocks, they will bring back their top three rebounders in Mouhamed Sow, Latrell Reid and Corey Washington. Mason said Reid has taken on the mantle of a leader in the locker room, and Brent Bland is in the mix for a starting job after seeing sparse minutes as a redshirt freshman. “Corey Washington has now built his game out to the 3-point line as well as Mouhamed,” Mason said. “So we’ve seen everybody take steps in their game, in their growth and their development.”
I asked Mason about being a Jersey City native and getting to lead a Division I program in his hometown: “Wagner was really my first job, and kind of after college where I grew up. Really difficult to leave a place that I consider to be home. But there is no place like home, and for me Jersey City, where I’m born and raised, to have an opportunity to take over an Elite Eight-level program was an opportunity of a lifetime. To have a chance to be the leader of the program right now means everything to me. To be able to bring a championship back to Jersey City, where I’m from, it would mean the world. So daily, we’re working, we’re grinding with that vision in mind.”