You don’t just walk into the Koessler Athletic Center. At least not this season. Canisius is 6-1 at home after sweeping Fairfield and Sacred Heart last weekend. The Griffs won just three games all of last season and did not have a win until Jan. 10. By Jan. 5, 2026, Canisius already has seven wins.
But head coach Jim Christian doesn’t think of it as progress in year two of his tenure, he sees every season as its own entity.
“It’s a weird time in college basketball,” Christian told Mid-Major Madness. “It would be different if I had everybody back from last year, then I’d be saying ‘the team really grew,’ but the team didn’t grow… we’ve got different players.”
One of those different pieces, Kahlil Singleton, had one of the most memorable MAAC performances we’ve seen in a long time. The Holy Cross transfer scored more points on Friday against Fairfield than anybody else in the MAAC this season, dropping 37 in an 85-81 win.
Singleton is the type of player who can erupt for those high-scoring games as he’s one of the best volume shooters from beyond the arc in the conference. He had 28 of his 37 in the first half, making eight threes. He bested his career-high of 33 that he set earlier in the season against Binghamton.
He credits a mentality shift over winter break.
“I felt like I was getting too complacent,” Singleton told Mid-Major Madness. “I almost accepted mediocrity.”
Singleton reflected on what he needed to do better during his days at home during the break and thought back to the days in high school where he consistently put up scoring performances like the one that he did on Friday.
He remembered scoring 55 points in his sophomore year of high school, setting a school record at Fort Vancouver High School in Washington and wondered why he couldn’t do that same thing for Canisius.
“I thought to myself that I did this is high school, don’t put college on a pedestal,” Singleton said. “One of my friends told me ‘fuck being realistic, just go out there and hoop like you’ve done your whole life.‘”
While he’d had that thought in the back of his mind, it clicked over break and resulted in back-to-back KenPom Game MVP performances in two home wins.
And winning at home – especially for Canisius which has the unique advantage and disadvantage of being geographically distant from most of the rest of the MAAC – is incredibly important.
“If you asked everybody, everybody would tell you the same thing,” Christian said. “To have the chance to do the things that we’re trying to do, you have to win at home the best you can. And when you get opportunities to steal a game on the road, you got to try to take advantage of it.
“Both us and Niagara, we travel to such lengths all the time. We do it, and a couple of teams have to do it to us, so taking advantage of anything at home is going to be beneficial for us.”
And credit goes to Christian for scheduling a bunch of winnable home games in non-conference play as well, something that Canisius didn’t have last year. He admitted that he did a bad job of scheduling last season. The Griffs only played two non-conference home games last year, this year they played five. Combine that with how many guarantee games the Griffs typically play, it wasn’t a winning formula.
After winning only three games last season, seeing proof of concept early is important for the image of the program, even if it doesn’t matter internally.
Canisius is still just 340th in KenPom. The metrics don’t think a ton of this team, but if you win enough home games, you’re going to be getting on the bus to Atlantic City.
Now, with road trips to Manhattan and Iona coming up, it’s about bottling up last week and taking it downstate.
“The mindset is to take that same home energy on the road,” Singleton said.
Ernest Shelton and Tasman Goodrick have been two of the best transfers into the MAAC this season. Goodrick is averaging 10 points and seven rebounds on 64% from the field for Siena, while Shelton is putting up 15 points per game for Merrimack.
The two played together at Division-II Gannon last season, leading the Golden Knights to a 27-7 campaign. If Goodrick makes his return from injury on Friday night, the meeting between Siena and Merrimack will be the first time those two take the same floor since the Sweet 16 loss to West Liberty in March. They’ll be on opposite sides though.
Shelton remembers the first time that he played with Goodrick when the latter arrived at Gannon from Cal Baptist last season.
“He’s 6-foot-10, stronger than everybody,” Shelton told Mid-Major Madness. “He’s very skilled in the post. Anywhere in that post area, he can shoot the jump hook, mid-range shot, basically dominating that area.”
Then, they went on to be the leading scorers for that team. Shelton averaged 17.4 points, and Goodrick averaged a 16 point, 11 rebound double-double.
When they both entered the portal, they didn’t know that they would both end up in the same conference, but when they did, they acknowledged it.
“He committed first, and I kind of knew I was going to be entering the MAAC,” Shelton said. “So it was funny, we were talking about playing each other when we were at Gannon when we both committed. It’s gonna be a battle if he is playing, but it’s gonna be fun seeing him again.”
The Gannon team has a groupchat on Snapchat, and that’s where most of the communication between Goodrick and Shelton has come recently. Shelton knows those guys will be locked in watching the game on Friday night.
If Merrimack is indeed able to get past Siena on Friday, it will walk into the building formerly known as the Yanitelli Center for what could be a matchup between the MAAC’s last two undefeated teams.
“We don’t expect to lose any game,” Shelton said. “I think going forward, I honestly see us winning every game. I don’t see us losing any games. I know my team, each and every day in practice, getting on each other. Coach is getting on us, but at the end of the day, we’re just gonna fight harder than everybody.”
Saint Peter’s goes on the road to Mount St. Mary’s on Friday with a chance to improve to 5-0 in league play. The Peacocks and Warriors weren’t expected to be the last two standing, as they’re not in the top tier of the conference in any of the metrics, but here we are.
It shouldn’t necessarily be a surprise to see these well-coached, defense-oriented programs start off strong though. SPU is the toughest team to have a true gauge on in the conference in my eyes because of how few non-conference games it plays every single year. The win over Marist last Friday was certainly a statement, even if the first three wins were against teams near the bottom of the league.
Both of these teams have played a ton of zone this year, and while it’s Joe Gallo’s identity as a coach, it’s not what Bashir Mason wants to do. We’ll have to see how much longer the zone sticks around in the Peacocks’ playbook. These are also the top two steal-forcing teams in MAAC play thus far thanks to the zones.
