St. Francis Brooklyn Men's Basketball In Hunt for NEC's Top Spot

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS. Halfway through the 2015-16 campaign, things are looking up for St Francis Brooklyn men’s basketball. After a slow start, back-to-back home wins—including an impressive 56-49 win over reigning Northeast Conference (NEC) champs Robert Morris—have the Terriers (6-11, 2-2 NEC) in the middle of the pack among conference title contenders.

Tonight in Smithtown, Rhode Island, St. Francis faces Bryant (6-11, 3-1 NEC). On Saturday in overtime the Bulldogs toppled Mount St. Mary’s (6-11, 3-1 NEC), picked first in the 2015 NEC Coaches preseason poll. In a down year for NEC competition—the conference’s ten teams posted an overall non-conference mark of 38-118 (.296 winning percentage)— Bryant, Fairleigh Dickinson, Mount St. Mary’s, Saint Francis, PA and Wagner sport identical 3-1 conference records. St. Francis has as good a chance as any of them of making a deep run in the conference playoffs.

Immediately following his team’s satisfying win over the Colonials, who last March came to Brooklyn Heights and captured a 66-63 win—and an NCAA title berth—over the favored Terriers in the 2015 NEC title game, a relaxed St. Francis head coach Glenn Braica spoke in his office overlooking the Generoso Pope Athletic Center’s basketball court.

Michael Randazzo: Your thoughts about the significance of Saturday night’s win.

Glenn Braica: It’s different players, so I don’t know how much of that comes into play. Some of our guys were here last year, [so were] some of their guys, but primarily there are a lot of new guys on both teams. The reality is, that’s who we played last year in the championship. We were the regular season champs; they were the tournament champs.

It’s a war every time we play them; it was today.

Randazzo: Clearly your team is lacking some key offensive parts but the Terriers trademark intensity is always apparent.

Braica: I think we can get better offensively, but I’m proud of their resiliency and toughness. Our defense has gotten better; we’ve held teams to 49, 55, 56 [points recently].

We’ve got to find a way to score and I’m excited about it because I don’t think we’re anywhere near where we can be scoring the ball.

Randazzo: You started conference play 0-2 and had a tough non-conference season...

Braica: Here’s the thing: I knew it was a possibility the record [4-9] in the non-league [because] the schedule’s very difficult. We had four guarantee games and other teams at the top of their leagues—Albany [a 71-66 loss] has thirteen wins already, we lost a one-possession game to them; NJIT has been good; we lost an overtime game to them [92-86]—so we lost to some really good teams.

If Glenn [Sanabria] didn’t get hurt [out for the season with a shoulder injury] we might have won two or three more [games].

But it didn’t happen. The reality is, Division 1 is really tough because most teams at this level go into their conference play with a really bad record. Then you’ve got to fight out of it. That’s what [we’re] doing.

These guys [Robert Morris] were picked second in the league. We [beat] them here. We went down to Mount last week and we should have won. We were up nine but we couldn’t score. But we held them to 44 points in overtime.

I’m excited, because if we continue to guard like that we’re going to be a really good team. We’ll get better offensively.

Randazzo: Last year you lost two games to Robert Morris because of free throws; now you hit 22 of 30 to beat the Colonials.

Braica: Hey, that happens. But you gotta keep fighting. [Saturday] they missed them.

A lot of it is, you can control some of it—you can’t control everything. But I’m proud of our guys. They play hard, they work, they’re good guys.

We’ll just take it one day at a time.

PHOTO CREDIT: Brooklyn Eagle