He averaged 11.3 points and a team-best 6.1 rebounds per game. Syracuse.com reported Monday that Adam Weitsman contributed money<\/a> to help Siena keep Doty. <\/p>\n The Saints finished 14-19 overall last season and 9-11 in Gerry McNamara\u2019s debut as head coach. They lost four conference games by a total of six points. They lost another in triple overtime.<\/p>\n When the season ended, four of Siena\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n 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.)<\/p>\n Siena\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s players appeared last week at an ice cream social to celebrate the building of a new basketball court at Girls, Inc. The men\u2019s team, since McNamara took over, has routinely held summer meet-and-greets for players to mingle with fans and media.<\/p>\n Illness prevented McNamara and one of his prized portal recruits, 7-foot Iowa transfer Riley Mulvey, from attending the session.<\/p>\n But the rest of the team showed up on a sweltering July afternoon.<\/p>\n Doty, who committed to Siena almost solely on the basis of McNamara\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n \u201cHonestly, we have something special here with our coaching staff that you don\u2019t see very often,\u201d Doty said. \u201cThey are as real as it gets, especially GMac. He\u2019s honest about everything and he\u2019s just a coach that everybody wanted to play for.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Marcus Jackson transferred from the University at Albany to play for McNamara last year, then tore his MCL and missed Siena\u2019s last 17 games. He said he never considered leaving Siena.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve 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\u2019re trying to build,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cI think the people we kept, everyone has the right values in terms of relationships and just the opportunity and belief in what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n Arinze Onuaku, the former SU center who along with Ryan Blackwell joined McNamara\u2019s staff last year, said developing relationships with players in year one was a foundational must for the staff.<\/p>\n Getting players to buy in, to believe in the mission, goes a long way toward establishing a winning culture. <\/p>\n \u201cThese guys want to play for us and they feel like we\u2019ve got unfinished business,\u201d Onuaku said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Siena\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, we had games that we dropped that we thought we should have won,\u201d Onuaku said. \u201cSo, I think in Year Two, we just get to the point where, how do we avoid that and win 20, 20-plus games.\u201d<\/p>\n Games aren\u2019t won in July, but Bart Torvik rates Siena as the second-best team <\/a>in the MAAC right now, behind only Iona. (Torvik still has Carey on Siena\u2019s roster.) The NCAA considers Torvik\u2019s data when it determines which teams get into its March Madness tournament. He is an influential voice in college basketball.<\/p>\n Iona is 155 on Torvik; Siena is 166.<\/p>\n Onuaku said Siena\u2019s ability to retain most of its best players is likely the reason it ranks so high in Torvik\u2019s preseason ratings.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of that is fine, but this league is so tight and so close,\u201d he said, \u201cyou gotta go and do it.\u201d <\/p>\n 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 \u201cupper body injury.\u201d Throughout his career at Syracuse and Siena, Carey has had injury issues. He\u2019s had knee trouble<\/a>. He\u2019s had at least one concussion<\/a>.<\/p>\n Onuaku said he and the Siena staff \u201chonestly don\u2019t know what the situation is.\u201d McNamara told the Albany Times-Union that Carey had the program\u2019s \u201cfull support.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what we know, he\u2019s not playing right now,\u201d Onuaku said. \u201cI just know he\u2019s too good of a player to not be playing. I can\u2019t really speak on what\u2019s going on, but I loved coaching the kid. He worked hard. He listened. I have nothing bad to say about him.\u201d<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Schenectady, N.Y. \u2014 Gavin Doty heard from people. Not coaches, he said. But agents and \u201cpeople outside the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-44871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Gerry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/5AMUPRKPFNFNFPUXD2ZQ2RAUYI.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n