GREENVILLE, S.C. \u2014 Given his strong ties to Syracuse and his recent success in transforming Siena into an NCAA Tournament team in just two seasons as head coach, Gerry McNamara is an obvious candidate to replace the recently fired Adrian Autry.<\/p>\n
And he knows that.<\/p>\n
But McNamara, a Scranton native who helped Syracuse to its only national championship in 2003 and spent 15 years (2009-24) there as an assistant coach under Jim Boeheim, is determined to keep his focus on the 16-seeded Saints\u2019 monumental task of facing face Duke, the tournament\u2019s No. 1 overall seed, in Thursday\u2019s first round at 2:50 p.m. on CBS.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think with what we did (this season), with the job obviously being open, it was inevitable, with my history there, just coming from there,\u201d McNamara said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
But he quickly added, \u201cI will reiterate again my full focus is on the team in that locker room that has an opportunity to play against the best team in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNamara has not deviated from that stance since Siena beat Merrimack, 64-54, in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship game Tuesday night to earn its first trip to the Big Dance since 2010.<\/p>\n
He would not say if he has been contacted by Syracuse about the opening.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy focus has been on them,\u201d McNamara said of his team, which went 23-11 this season. \u201cThe reality is because of them, my name is coming up. That\u2019s the way I look at this. You get good players, you coach them right, you win, everybody gets recognition. I think the situation with the job opening and what we\u2019ve done in the last week, there was obviously going to be some speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n
McNamara said he\u2019s not addressed the rumors with his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got my full attention,\u201d McNamara said. \u201cThat\u2019s where my focus is. These kids have given me everything they\u2019ve got every day this season, and they deserve my full attention, and they\u2019ve got it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Autry was fired by Syracuse after going 49-48 in three seasons and failing to get the Orange to the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
Duke (32-2) coach Jon Scheyer praised McNamara as a worthy opposing head coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve known G-Mac for a long time. He\u2019s a great coach,\u201d Scheyer said. \u201cHe\u2019s done an incredible job with this team. They\u2019re hard-nosed. They\u2019re tough. They have great role identity. They play a very clear style. And we\u2019re excited for this challenge and opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GREENVILLE, S.C. \u2014 Given his strong ties to Syracuse and his recent success in transforming Siena into an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[65681,22507,178,180,179,6736],"class_list":["post-143616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-gerry-mcnamara","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-syracuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}