4 things to watch for a week in the MAAC

If you haven’t read my 3000 words from Friday on the MAAC, you’re going to be a little lost. It’s time for four quick things to watch.MAAC SCHEDULE: 12/29-1/4

(All times eastern standard)

Merrimack at Sacred Heart, 2:00 p.m.Marist at Quinnipiac 4:00 p.m.Saint Peter’s at Fairfield, 7:00 p.m.Iona at Mount St. Mary’s, 7:00 p.m.Manhattan at Rider, 7:00 p.m.

Mount St. Mary’s at Merrimack, 3:00 p.m.Sacred Heart at Niagara, 4:00 p.m.Fairfield at Canisius, 4:00 p.m.Siena at Iona, 7:00 p.m.Marist at Saint Peter’s, 7:00 p.m.Quinnipiac at Manhattan, 7:00 p.m,

Sacred Heart at Canisius, noonManhattan at Merrimack, noonSiena at Rider, 2:00 p.m.Mount St. Mary’s at Quinnipiac, 2:00 p.m.Fairfield at Niagara, 2:00 p.m.Iona at Marist, 2:00 p.m.

Mount St. Mary’s takes on two teams that it faced on its improbable run to last season’s MAAC Championship.

First, the Mount plays at home against Iona, which it defeated in the title game 63-49 back in March. Aside from that Atlantic City game, though, Donny Lind’s team fell to Tobin Anderson’s Gaels in one of the best MAAC games of the entire season, an overtime matchup in early February in Emmitsburg.

Dejour Reaves made a buzzer-beater, and Lind didn’t forget it.

Reaves is at Fordham now, and Anderson is on Bryan Hodgson’s staff at South Florida. Only Luke Jungers and Patrick Wallace (and Brian Beyrer) remember the feeling of coming out of the Mount with a win and the sting of coming out of AC with a loss.

Sitting at 0-2, but with two single-digit losses in conference play, the Mount needs to start stringing together wins, but the schedule isn’t doing them any favors early on.

The Mount also takes on Merrimack, which it defeated in the MAAC semifinals when Budd Clark didn’t take the final shot for the Warriors.

GERIOT’S FIRST INTERVIEW

When Dan Geriot was injured playing pro ball in Europe in 2011, he wanted to move to coaching. He was offered two interviews when he got back to the United States, so he drove from Richmond to Emmitsburg to interview for an ops spot under Robert Burke at Mount St. Mary’s, before staying with his aunt in the Philadelphia area on the way to Princeton the next morning.

“I had a decision to make,” Geriot said. “The only difference was that Princeton was on a full-time recruiting role, so that’s why I said yes to that.”

Keeping himself in the Princeton tree was a great decision for Geriot. It’s what got him his assistant job at Campbell, which introduced him to Mike Magpayo, who would become one of his best friends. Through that relationship, Geriot met Koby Altman (current NBA GM) and eventually worked for over a decade in the league before coming back to the college game at Iona.

Had he taken the Mount job, it’s probably a different path.

“You never know where it’s going to go,” Geriot said. “You got a different circle of opportunities, a different circle of just who Coach Burke knows. You don’t realize when you’re 23 how delicate it can be.”

When we last left you, Fairfield was reeling. The Stags were coming off losses to Manhattan and Merrimack on the heels of a mostly winning, but unimpressive, November. Chris Casey’s team hasn’t lost since.

With wins over Monmouth and Central Connecticut (and CCNY), the Stags are playing their best basketball of the year heading into the New Year. And one may think that a matchup with Saint Peter’s – should the Peacocks continue to play zone – would favor them given their elite rebounding chops.

However, Saint Peter’s doesn’t want to zone much, and it didn’t zone at all against non-Division-I Centenary.

Anquan Hill will not play for Sacred Heart on Monday against Merrimack. He’s now missed three games in a row. He averages 14.9 points and 6.2 rebounds, but the Pioneers have gotten good production out of freshman Abdou Yadd in the meantime.

Yadd is going to be a terrific player once he starts to put it all together with using his size, but he’s ahead of schedule because he’s shot the ball at a solid clip from beyond the arc. Against Towson, he was much of Sacred Heart’s first-half offense, scoring 16 points on the night.

Meanwhile, Quinnipiac is expected to be without Jaden Zimmerman for the week. He’s their leading scorer, and it will only make life more difficult for Amarri Monroe, who was bottled up in Quinnipiac’s only meeting with Marist last season at McCann Arena.

Monroe scored 15 points, sure, but he was just six of 17 from the field, and Jaden Daughtry, the MAAC’s best defender, did a terrific job on him. If Daughtry has a similar defensive performance with Zimmerman off the floor, it’ll be incumbent on Asim Jones, Keith McKnight, and Quinnipiac’s supporting cast to get the job done against an extremely stingy Red Foxes group.