Schenectady, N.Y. — Gavin Doty heard from people.
Not coaches, he said. But agents and “people outside the programs” reached out to him and threw out dollar figures and tried to convince him that “this will get your game to where you want to get it.”
But Doty, the Fulton native who was a consensus All-MAAC rookie team selection after his freshman season at Siena, knew where he wanted to be in 2025-26.
So on March 21, he posted a message on Twitter.
I’m back, it said.
“I kinda wanted to put it out there to let people know that I was staying,” Doty said. “I just wanted to relieve some of the pressure. Some people were reaching out. A lot of agents. A lot of people.”
Doty, a 6-foot-4 guard, had an exceptional freshman season and is exactly the kind of player who attracts the interest of teams that play in bigger conferences than Siena.
He averaged 11.3 points and a team-best 6.1 rebounds per game. Syracuse.com reported Monday that Adam Weitsman contributed money to help Siena keep Doty.
The Saints finished 14-19 overall last season and 9-11 in Gerry McNamara’s debut as head coach. They lost four conference games by a total of six points. They lost another in triple overtime.
When the season ended, four of Siena’s top five scorers elected to stay and play another year for McNamara and his staff. Major Freeman, who averaged 13 points per game last season, transferred to Charlotte. But Justice Shoats (16.1 ppg), Brendan Coyle (12.8 ppg), Doty and Marcus Jackson (6.2 ppg, 4.1 rpg) returned.
Peter Carey, the former Syracuse center who transferred to Siena last year, has left the program. As far as the Siena staff knows, he did not enter the transfer portal. (More on Carey later in this story.)
Siena’s men’s and women’s players appeared last week at an ice cream social to celebrate the building of a new basketball court at Girls, Inc. The men’s team, since McNamara took over, has routinely held summer meet-and-greets for players to mingle with fans and media.
Illness prevented McNamara and one of his prized portal recruits, 7-foot Iowa transfer Riley Mulvey, from attending the session.
But the rest of the team showed up on a sweltering July afternoon.
Doty, who committed to Siena almost solely on the basis of McNamara’s reputation and personality, emerged by the middle of last season as a Siena starter and a reliably relentless rebounder who impacted games with his tireless energy. He is a key returnee.
“Honestly, we have something special here with our coaching staff that you don’t see very often,” Doty said. “They are as real as it gets, especially GMac. He’s honest about everything and he’s just a coach that everybody wanted to play for.”
Jackson, the Amsterdam, N.Y. native and brother of Milwaukee Bucks guard Andre Jackson, knew McNamara from his Syracuse days, when the Orange recruited Andre.
Marcus Jackson transferred from the University at Albany to play for McNamara last year, then tore his MCL and missed Siena’s last 17 games. He said he never considered leaving Siena.
“We’ve created such great relationships with not only each other but with the coaches as well. I mean, it says a lot about what we have at Siena, the culture we’re trying to build,” Jackson said. “I think the people we kept, everyone has the right values in terms of relationships and just the opportunity and belief in what we have.”
Siena College head men’s basketball coach Gerry McNamara with assistants Ryan Beaury (DOBO), Ryan Blackwell and Arinze Onuaku. Blackwell and Onuaku are former SU players. Beaury was the SU video coordinator.Siena College
Arinze Onuaku, the former SU center who along with Ryan Blackwell joined McNamara’s staff last year, said developing relationships with players in year one was a foundational must for the staff.
Getting players to buy in, to believe in the mission, goes a long way toward establishing a winning culture.
“These guys want to play for us and they feel like we’ve got unfinished business,” Onuaku said. “They didn’t like the way the season went. They knew we left a lot on the board, so they wanted to come back season two and give it another shot.”
Siena’s goal, Onuaku said, is to win a MAAC championship. He and the Siena staff, he said, learned a lot about how to make that happen in their first season in Albany.
Everybody on the Siena staff is either a Syracuse graduate or is tied to a Syracuse graduate. The MAAC was a mystery that very quickly needed decoding.
The coaching staff, Onuaku said, immediately wanted to develop relationships with their players and get a feel for their games. They needed to grasp the personnel on other MAAC teams, to know what worked in the league. They needed to figure out which adjustments meant more wins.
“Obviously, we had games that we dropped that we thought we should have won,” Onuaku said. “So, I think in Year Two, we just get to the point where, how do we avoid that and win 20, 20-plus games.”
Games aren’t won in July, but Bart Torvik rates Siena as the second-best team in the MAAC right now, behind only Iona. (Torvik still has Carey on Siena’s roster.) The NCAA considers Torvik’s data when it determines which teams get into its March Madness tournament. He is an influential voice in college basketball.
Iona is 155 on Torvik; Siena is 166.
Onuaku said Siena’s ability to retain most of its best players is likely the reason it ranks so high in Torvik’s preseason ratings.
“All of that is fine, but this league is so tight and so close,” he said, “you gotta go and do it.”
NOTE on Carey: Peter Carey appeared in 23 of 32 Siena games last season, averaging 16.2 minutes, 5.2 points and 3 rebounds. He missed games because of what McNamara termed an “upper body injury.” Throughout his career at Syracuse and Siena, Carey has had injury issues. He’s had knee trouble. He’s had at least one concussion.
Onuaku said he and the Siena staff “honestly don’t know what the situation is.” McNamara told the Albany Times-Union that Carey had the program’s “full support.”
“From what we know, he’s not playing right now,” Onuaku said. “I just know he’s too good of a player to not be playing. I can’t really speak on what’s going on, but I loved coaching the kid. He worked hard. He listened. I have nothing bad to say about him.”
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