RIVERDALE, N.Y. – You just never know what you’re going to see when you walk into a MAAC gym.
In the midst of what became an improbable 18-point second-half comeback win for Manhattan against undefeated Quinnipiac, Jaspers guard Terrance Jones ripped Asim Jones down from behind as he went up for a layup.
It was a flagrant foul. Easy call for Brian O’Connell, John Cahill and Nathan Hall. But that was only the start of it.
The facts are unclear as to who egged whom first, but somebody somewhere took exception to what somebody said or did as the teams walked back to their benches. From there, both head coaches got into a shouting match, laced with expletives. Assistant coaches and players were in the mix as well, and the officials took a long time to separate the teams.
Tom Pecora and John Gallagher were both ejected from there and had to be escorted off the court. Neither wanted to leave. Once they did, both of them gestured to their respective fanbases, enlivening an already juiced-up Friday night crowd. After Jones made two flagrant free throws to put Quinnipiac ahead by six with five minutes left, Manhattan outscored the Bobcats 18-11 to win the game.
Associate head coaches JR Lynch and Shaun Morris downplayed the events of the scrum after the game.
“I think it would be summed up as MAAC basketball on a Friday night in league play,” Morris said. “There’s tempers that flared. I think the referees did everything they could to kind of squash it.”
“It was two teams competing,” Lynch said. “We were competing, and things like that sometimes happen.”
Morris did add that Quinnipiac may have taken extra exception to the play because star Jaden Zimmerman got hurt on a similar play last season, and it kept him out for much of the offseason recovering from hand surgery.
“You get pulled down from behind, that can cause some uneasiness,” Morris said.
Mid-Major Madness requested a pool report from the officials, but was unable to obtain one.
In the moment, the head coaches did what their instinct was – to stand up for their players through thick and thin. Quinnipiac couldn’t turn Pecora into their martyr with a win though.
“Coach P is a New Yorker through and through,” Morris said. “He’s not gonna take a lot of nonsense from people. He’s gonna have his guys back, and our guys have his back. That’s why we feel so unfortunate that we let him down.”
After Lynch and Jasper players finished speaking to the media, Gallagher took to the microphone to apologize to the Jasper fanbase for his actions.
On Saturday, the league issued a formal reprimand to both head coaches. No suspensions were given. The two teams meet again in Hamden on Jan. 19. We’ll see if tempers flare again.
The Jaspers’ starting backcourt of Jaden Winston and Devin Dinkins combined for 40 points on Friday night and are averaging a combined 30.2 on the season. Each came through in big spots on Friday.
Winston scored 12 in the first half and then made a huge play in the final minute, drawing a mismatch with Keith McKnight and beating him to the basket for a runner off the glass to put Manhattan ahead by three. He finished with a game-high 22 points shooting 10-of-12 from inside the arc.
He’s nearly doubled his scoring average from 8.7 to 15.7. Winston has taken steps forward in efficiency inside the arc, at the foul line, and most importantly, beyond the arc. He has also increased his volume of 2-point attempts and free throws.
Winston doesn’t think he’s taken much of a scoring leap, but Dinkins does.
“He’s being humble about it,” Dinkins said. “He’s put the work in for it, and the results are showing. Every time he has the ball he’s aggressive, knocking down the three ball with confidence.”
When you pair that with Dinkins, already one of the MAAC’s top players in terms of getting to the foul line and hitting threes, Manhattan has a backcourt that can outscore just about anybody else in the league. Dinkins came alive down the stretch with big plays of his own, including a wing three and a finger roll, each giving Manhattan different leads.
Every time you roll the ball out, the Jaspers’ backcourt is going to give you buckets.
“They created a bond that can’t be broken,” Lynch said. “They’re in the gym together all the time. They’re always around each other. And we’re seeing it in action throughout these games.”
Manhattan is 361st nationally in defensive rebounding rate and 286th nationally in offensive rebounding rate. The glass is a clear weakness for this group, and sometimes, it feels like Anthony Isaac is holding it together by a thread.
The team’s offensive rebounding rate is 6% higher with him on the floor than off, a major reason why the offense is 15 points per 100 possessions better with him as well.
Isaac is always around the ball. Grabbing 13 rebounds is impressive enough, but the degree of difficulty on many of his rebounds was significantly harder because of the way these teams play. For Manhattan to only be a minus-eight on the glass in this game honestly felt like a miracle.
“We know the impact that he has on the team,” Lynch said. “And you can tell. He’s a presence. He brings physicality to our group, and it showed today.”
I wrote multiple times during the first few months of the season about how Manhattan struggled to close out games and maintain leads. It blew games against Wagner and Army, most notably, but Gallagher was convinced after losing to Furman that his team was ready for MAAC play.
The Jaspers trailed for most of the game against Rider, but came back to nick a win in the final minute. Then, the 18-point second-half comeback on Friday night against one of the favorites to win the conference.
Is this variance swinging in the right direction? Or has Manhattan turned a new leaf and evolved as a team to a new form?
“These games are possessions,” Lynch said. “Anybody can beat anybody. And that’s what we saw today. We got the job done because these guys were mature and they executed late in the game.”
Fraser Roxburgh had been struggling badly, but came through with back-to-back threes to tie the game at 70 as the clock ticked down.
Manhattan knows that it needs more from him than what it has gotten, and hitting those shots could be a step in that direction.
“We all smiled,” Lynch said. “We were all hyped for him. He’s been battling.”
When Amarri Monroe picked up his second foul, there were about 12 minutes left in the first half, and the Bobcats were ahead by three points.
At halftime, Quinnipiac led by 14, and Monroe didn’t play a minute in between. That’s 12 minutes on the road outscoring a MAAC opponent without your two All-MAAC studs by 11. Morris said it was some of the best basketball that QU had played all year long.
“The biggest thing was we were able to get in transition,” Morris said. “We wanted to make this game as much as we could go up and down, knowing how much they change their defenses, knowing how much they want to rely on trying to slow the game down and run their set plays.”
Keith McKnight was incredible in that stretch, with multiple highlight reel dunks. He went into halftime by putting a poster on Marko Ljubicic. The freshman finished with 18 points and four assists. Sophomore Grant Randall also had a big game with 22 points and eight rebounds. Seeing those players step forward with Zimmerman still nursing that lower leg injury is huge.
Quinnipiac’s guards don’t do a ton of dribble drive. More of that comes from the slashing play of Monroe, McKnight, Zimmerman and others. But the Jaspers different zone defenses made it difficult for the Bobcats to get a clear line to the basket.
Jones was 0-for-9 from inside the arc, as the Jaspers turned him into a passer. He settled in and had 10 assists. Samson Reilly has only attempted 11 field goals inside the arc all year, and it’s clear that Quinnipiac loses a little bit of juice out of the backcourt without Zimmerman.
It even felt like Monroe couldn’t get to his spots like he usually does. After the first few possessions of the game, which included him bullying his man to the basket, he couldn’t throw his body around and generate easy advantages. On the final possession of the game, you’d love to be able to get Monroe downhill, but against the zone, he couldn’t drive and had to pass to Ronell Giles Jr., who missed a corner three.
“When they play that zone,” Morris said. “You’re not going to be able to dictate exactly what shot you can get.”
If there’s one play that is going to stick with me from this game aside from the flagrant foul, it came with 47 seconds left and Manhattan ahead by one.
Monroe attempted to swing the ball back to the top of the key so Jones could initiate offense, but Jones couldn’t catch it. The ball bounced off of Jones and into the backcourt, giving Manhattan the possession it needed to extend the lead to three.
From there, Quinnipiac attempted a quick three, with Monroe trailing the play, instead of working for a better look. They got lucky, as McKnight grabbed the offensive rebound and put it in, but they put themselves in position to not be in position with prior mistakes.
The Bobcats turned it over 15 times with a turnover rate about 4% higher than the season average.
Other Notes Around the League
Merrimack 75, Mount St. Mary’s 65
You can change the players, you can change the year, but you still get the same feeling watching a Merrimack game. The Warriors are masters of game flow and game management, keeping the Mount at an arms’ length in the second half and answering whenever it needed a big basket. The Mountaineers are shooting just 24% from three in conference play and have made just five total in the last two games. Merrimack is now 4-0 in the MAAC for the second straight year and has won six of its last seven games.
Canisius 85, Fairfield 81
Kahlil Singleton scored 28 of his 37 points in the first half to lead the Griffs to the win. The 37 is the most that any MAAC player has scored since Brycen Goodine, ironically, had 37 against Canisius in March 2024. Goodine is also the last MAAC player to outdo that 37 mark, as he scored 40 against Siena earlier that season. The win improves Canisius to 5-1 at home, with the only loss coming to Buffalo. Canisius had 22 assists and just six turnovers. Fairfield currently ranks 312th nationally in forcing turnovers. The Stags are now 0-4 in MAAC play for the first time since 2013-14, when it started 0-7 and finished 4-16. Chris Casey went back to the four-freshman starting lineup.
Niagara 64, Sacred Heart 61
The 58-possession slog was both teams’ slowest game of the season. Niagara shut down both Mekhi Conner and Nyle Ralph-Beyer, holding them to a combined five points and one assist in 43 minutes. The Purple Eagles got Trenton Walters back from injury after he missed all of December, and he scored eight points in 21 minutes. Justin Page had a big second half, and Reggie Prudhomme came through with the game-winning shot in the final seconds. It’s Niagara’s first Division-I win since Nov. 10 against Delaware State. When Niagara allows fewer than 70 points, it is 4-0 and 0-9 otherwise.
Despite Gavin Doty nearly singlehandedly bringing Siena back, the Saints fell in a tough road game at the Hynes Center. Toby Harris continued to shoot the lights out, making six threes for the third time this season. CJ Anthony responded to his worst game of the season on Monday with a 10-point, 13-assist double-double. With Tasman Goodrick out for Siena, Francis Folefac stepped up with a big performance, but it took a hit on the Saints’ depth. That makes it three losses in a row for Siena, which still lacks a win against a top-200 team. The good news for the Saints? They don’t face another top-200 team until Jan. 22.
Saint Peter’s 69, Marist 59
The Peacocks held Marist to just 21 points in the second half and never trailed after a 17-2 run that spanned the end of the first into the early part of the second. This is the type of win that legitimizes Saint Peter’s now 4-0 start in MAAC play. Since Dec. 1, SPU’s only loss came in overtime on the road at Georgetown, and it ranks second in the conference in Torvik in that span. It may also be worth mentioning that SPU has allowed opponents to shoot just 23% from beyond the arc in conference play. Marist’s home game against Iona on Sunday became all the more important.
LEAGUE NOTE: Home teams went 6-0 on Friday night. Through 24 league games, there have been just six road wins. No team has multiple road wins in conference play yet.
