Bobcats rout Marist behind 17-of-35 shooting from 3-point range
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ - Siena men's basketball coach Carmen Maciarillo sat at a courtside table late Tuesday and watched a Quinnipiac team stumble on a six-game losing streak in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament.
Graduate forward Jacob Rigoni scored a season-high 26 points, including seven 3-pointers, and the 11th-seeded Bobcats scored 17 of 35 from beyond the arc in a 77-52 blowout to No. 6 Marist in a first-round matchup. Boardwalk Hall.
Quinnipiac (13-16) will face Siena (15-13) in the quarterfinals at 7 pm. Thursday.
"I don't think we turned a switch," Rigoni said. "I think it was about approaching every game, we see what went wrong and what went right in those games and it's just to build on that during practice. We don't define victory or defeat. It's how we feel and if the ball bounced a different way in some of those losses, they would have won and we would be feeling good about ourselves."
The Bobcats also put on an uncharacteristically clingy defensive display. They narrowed down Marist to 71.8 points per game, allowing Quinnipiac to finish 10th out of 11 MAAC teams.
The Red Fox shot just 39.7 percent from the field, including 2 out of 17 from the back of the arc. Freshman point guard Jao Itsuka, who will almost certainly be named League Rookie of the Year on Wednesday, had just eight points on a 4-of-9 shooting.
"I thought it was probably a good time," said Quinnipiac head coach Baker Dunleavy. “It was definitely our best shooting performance of the year, but I really think it was a product of our best defensive effort. Marist is one of the top teams in our league on the offensive… A well-trained team, which is difficult to play against, and our defence, our reflexes, our toughness set the tone for us, gave us confidence and I think that's why we were able to blast an offensive."
Quinnipiac sophomore guard Daisy Jones scored 20 points and third-team All-MAAC Redshirt junior guard Matt Balance added 18 points.
Next up for the Bobcats is Sienna, who scored 78–71 and 85–76 in their two regular-season meetings. Sienna junior guard Colby Rogers averaged 22.5 points in two wins, and Sienna scored the same 28 (51.9 percent) from the field in each game.
But Sienna will not have graduate guard Anthony Gaines, the third-team All-MAAC player who tore his ACL in his right knee in Saturday's defeat at Canisius.
"I'll be the first to say that I'm very sorry for Anthony Gaines' injury," Dunleavy said. "He's an amazing kid. I got to know him a little bit when I was at Villanova. He's a class person and a really great competitor... We've prepared hard for him this year and we definitely Got it from. They're just a good team and they have their record for a reason. So we've got our work cut out for us. We're going to have to make some adjustments, like we did against Marist last time. When we played Siena. But we know it's not going to be easy and we have to go watch the tapes. Luckily, we have tomorrow to prepare and spend some time on them. The most important thing is that we Let's channel the things we did tonight and have the best version of us."