In Marist men’s basketball’s first game as Marist University, they host their Route-9 rivals, the Siena College Saints on ESPNU at a primetime tipoff of 9 p.m.
This is the third time in the last four years that Marist has been featured on ESPNU, with the two prior against Manhattan on February 25, 2022, and Fairfield last season on March 1, 2024. Marist came out on top in both matchups.
On Friday ESPNU will showcase the 95th installment of the historic rivalry. Siena leads the all-time series since 1981 with a 63-31 record but the Red Foxes won the last two matchups.
Marist currently sits atop the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference with a record of 8-1 in conference and 15-3 overall. Heading into the game versus the Saints, the Red Foxes are riding a two-game win streak after sweeping their Western New York trip defeating Niagara and Canisius. Before their two-game winning streak, Marist dropped a game to Rider on January 18, snapping their previous nine-game win streak.
On the other side, the Saints are seventh in the conference with a 4-5 conference record and 9-11 record overall. In the week prior, they split games against Mount St. Mary’s and Iona.
After starting the season with three straight wins, the Saints have had trouble finding consistency trading wins and losses. Siena has a 3-6 record on the road while Marist has only lost one game at home this season.
Throughout the stellar season up to this point for Marist, they have been led by sophomore guard Josh Pascarelli, averaging 16.4 points a game including a season-high 25 points against Army West Point on Nov. 15 in a 91-88 OT victory.
Pascarelli’s 16.4 points per game ranks third in the MAAC. Another player to watch for the Red Foxes is sophomore guard Jadin Collins-Roberts, who comes into this game with a season-high 11 assists against Niagara last week and is second on the team averaging 33.6 minutes a game.
Siena is also headlined by a guard duo of Justice Shoats and Major Freeman, who are top 10 in the MAAC in scoring. Shoats leads the team averaging 14.8 points per game, while Freeman trails him at 14.1.
Earlier in the season, Shoats scored 31 points against Bryant on November 8 in a 90-88 OT win. That performance is the second-highest-scoring game in the MAAC this season.
The rivalry has yielded several dramatic games at McCann Arena over the years. In 2000, Sean Kennedy hit a buzzer-beater from about 40 feet away to beat Siena 70-67 in the final game of the regular season.
In the 2007 regular-season finale, Marist played Siena on ESPN2 in a game that started at 11 a.m. with the MAAC regular-season title on the line.
That Marist team set the program record for wins in a season (25), and the game was Senior Day for one of the program’s best classes, featuring Jared Jordan and Will Whittington. Before a sellout crowd mostly dressed in white for a “white out,” Marist won 98-88 in overtime to win its first outright MAAC regular-season championship.
Most recently in 2024, junior forward Matt McCool’s dramatic game-winning layup gave Marist a 50-48 win after trailing by 16 in the first half.
Tonight provides another opportunity for each team to etch their names into the history of this rivalry in front of a national audience.
Edited by Marley Pope
Graphic by Cara Lacey; Photos by Jaylen Rizzo
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