Mount basketball

Steve Morano
MSMU Class of 2024

(12/2022) Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams of Mount Saint Mary’s had something to look forward to coming into the 2022-23 season. Before the end of the 2021-22 school year, the university announced that it would be leaving the Northeast Conference (NEC) and joining the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC). Widely regarded as a much more competitive conference, the Mount left their old conference after spending close to thirty years in the NEC. This announcement came with a lot of unknown factors, but it is widely regarded as a good decision for the future of the school’s athletic program. Especially when it comes to the basketball side of things, for both the men’s and women’s programs.

With regards to the men’s program, there was a lot of hesitation towards the possibility of playing in the new conference, especially because they were missing players like Mezie Offurum, who decided to take his fifth year of eligibility to play for James Madison University in the Sun Belt Conference and Nana Opoku, who finished out his fourth year of eligibility and tested the waters of the NBA Draft. But there was also excitement coming into the new season, as returners Jalen Benjamin, senior, Deandre Thomas, graduate student, and Malik Jefferson, graduate student, were all coming back and healthy for the new season. Jefferson coming back was very important for Coach Dan Englestad as Jefferson is the all-time rebound leader in the history of the school. With the edition of senior transfer George Tinsley, who was named on the 2019-20 AEC All-Freshman team and won the AEC Rookie of the Year with Binghamton, the coaching staff looked to shore up another big man next to Jefferson under the basket.

Before conference play begins on December 1st against reigning conference champions and 2022 Elite Eight Finalist, St. Peters, the Mount had to play a series of out-of-conference and exhibition games. Play started on November 7th against West Virginia in Morgantown, resulting in a 76-58 loss. The eighteen points that separated the two were noteworthy, as the Mountaineers faced off against Basketball Hall of Fame head coach Bob Huggins, who has a career record of 919-399. The Mount faced off next against Coppin State, whose head coach, Juan Dixon, was a member of the Maryland Terrapins team who won the 2002 National Championship. The game ended 83-78 in favor of the Eagles, leaving the Mount heartbroken in Baltimore.

After a close loss to Coppin State, the Mountaineers returned home to face local rival McDaniel College for the first time since the 1970’s. With Coach Englestad out with an illness, associate head coach Will Holland stepped in to fill the roll. The game ended 60-38 in favor of the Mount, and while many fans in attendance begrudged the score line against Division 3 school, the Mountaineers were solid on defense. Both forwards Jefferson and Tinsley brought down eight rebounds each, and Benjamin brought down seven of his own as a guard. Benjamin also shined on offense; leading the team in scoring at 18 points, he used his small stature to go around McDaniel’s big men and score.

Leadership is the key for the men’s team this year going into MAAC play. Postgame, Benjamin had something to say about this, commenting, "We have to change the culture, bringing the energy every day, making this school really a basketball school, winning games, and then hoping the younger guys take off of us: no off days, just constantly grinding. It’s a grind every day."

The Mount’s women’s team started the new season off on the high of retaining their NEC crown from 2020-21into the 2021-22 season which earned them a spot back to the NCAA Women’s Division 1 Tournament where they exited in the First Four against Longwood in a heartbreaking 74-70 loss. The women’s team also saw a significant loss in offensive prowess and experience in losing Kendall Bresee and Tess Borgosz after both of their final years of eligibility were up. But they retained many rising leaders in the team including Michaela Harrison, graduate student, Isabella Hunt, junior, and Jessica Tomasetti, junior. They also added graduate student Natalie Villaflor, who decided to take her extra year of eligibility at the Mount from Robert Morris.

The women’s schedules were a lot tougher to start out then the men’s, as they had to play #13 Virginia Tech and #10 North Carolina State, in which they lost 101-45 and 86-38, respectively. In between the two ranked games, they played Richmond, another tough school, in which they were bested 87-44. All three games were on the road and were played in a six-day period. But before MAAC play is set to begin on December 17th, they have a flurry of out-of-conference games including Cornell, Loyola, Pitt-Johnstown, UMBC, and their home opener against Navy, which occurred on November 19th.

The team played the incoming Navy Midshipmen at Knott Arena, a game that was meant to set the pace for the upcoming out-of-conference games and unveil the NEC Championship banner. The unveiling, however, was pushed back to December 10th. The game started off with good pace, but they could not put together a good scoring run, as the Midshipmen kept them on their toes going into halftime with a score of 23-21 in favor of the Mount. But with the offense finally finding its feet in the last quarter, led by the electric partnership of Harrison and Tomasetti, the Mount settled in and won out 68-59. On a more somber note, promising first year student Giana Hoddinott of Littlestown, PA came off the court with an injury. She was seen on the bench later in the game receiving treatment, but head coach Antoine White said she would go out for a scan the next day.

Although the team pressed high throughout the whole game and tied up Navy well under the basket, they just could not pull away. Coach Antoine White commented, "We wanted to come in and have tempo in this game, that’s why we started out pressing them. It didn’t go the way we wanted it to go, to speed them up and get the turnovers; they wanted to play in the half court and grind it out, and we allowed them to do that, but we battled them in the post. We made them take some tough contested shots down there and we did a fairly good job for the most part of taking advantage of them on the other end of the court."

This upcoming season is full of unknowns for both the men’s and women’s teams at the Mount. That comes with being in a new, more competitive conference for the first season. It will be exciting to see how both teams go from here, but that is a part of its beauty: the potential that it brings. For most of its athletic history, the Mount was in the old College Division of the NCAA, now known as Division 2. Change has always been seen as a challenge at the Mount, but a great challenge, as it has led the school to bigger and better things. And moving to a more challenging conference can only be seen as a good thing, both for the current teams and the future members of each respective team.