LOUDONVILLE, N.Y. – Don’t call them underdogs. By now, Siena is sick of that stereotype.

‘Underdog’ means they haven’t arrived yet. ‘Underdog’ means they’re still a cute subplot, a gimmick. Standing at midcourt of Siena’s practice facility, seniors Alex Franklin and Edwin Ubiles cringe at that word. They shuffle their feet, exchange a brief glance at each other and shake their heads.

As if to say, ‘Don’t go there.’

‘I don’t ever think we’re the underdogs,’ Franklin said. ‘It’s people on the outside that say we’re underdogs. We think we can play with the best. We can compete with anybody.’

With a banner highlighting back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament perched behind them, it’s hard to disagree. The latest mid-major heartthrob has grown into a legitimate contender. After upsets over Vanderbilt and Ohio State in the last two tournaments, Siena, playing at NASCAR speeds, believes it can take the next step.

‘Our goal is to always win the championship at the end of the year,’ Franklin said.

Not exactly something you’ll hear at any old Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) school. But here, such hopes are realistic. Five years ago, Siena was a 6-24 bottom-feeder. Fran McCaffery took over as head coach, dipped into his rich Philadelphia roots and, most of all, instilled a dizzying end-to-end style that gives Siena a chance to knock off Goliath any night.

As soon as a shot is missed or made, the ball must instantly reverse direction. The slightest pause is scolded. Every player must be moving every play in Siena’s center-less offense. The Saints have half court plays, sure. But those are only used if needed.

Siena would much rather rev the game into a blur of wind sprints.

At one point during a 5-on-5 segment at practice, the offense deflated into a half-court set. For a microsecond, players were frozen like mannequins. Nothing too stale to the naked eye. A nearby assistant coach yelled.

‘Keep moving!’ he screamed.

Next to him, fellow assistant Mitch Buonaguro waved a player away for emphasis.

‘Move! Move!’

The ball swung, eventually returned to point guard Ronald Moore and with his cock-eyed shooting form, Moore drilled the three-pointer. The beckoning continues.

‘Break!’ Buonaguro screamed to the defense. ‘Go! Push it!’

This is Siena’s secret. This is what could make the tiny 3,217-strong school nationally relevant for an extended period of time. The Saints make opponents chase them.

‘Fran has built the program on running and guys like playing that way,’ said Buonaguro, who was filling in for the ill McCaffery. ‘It’s good for recruiting. Word gets out that we run, and recruits like that.’

Word spreads most rampant in Philadelphia. Instead of settling on local heroes like many mid-majors, Siena has a clear pipeline to run-and-gun athletes in Pennsylvania. McCaffery is from Philadelphia, and Buonaguro was an assistant coach at Villanova for eight years. Their relationships in the area run deep. Siena has six players from Pennsylvania on the team and many more on the way.

Sweat pouring from his brow, the 6-foot-5 Franklin hinted that Siena won’t be a one-class wonder. He sees sustainability.

‘Back home, nobody doesn’t know where Siena is at,’ Franklin said. ‘It’s good that we finally got our name on the map.’

Still, Siena’s rise is a double-edged sword. After last year, scheduling games has become a journey to the center of the earth. It took assistant coach Adam Chaskin more than 300 phone calls to complete a non-conference schedule this season.

Home games against schools from power conferences are a near impossibility after last season. Siena pushed Pittsburgh, Kansas, Oklahoma State and Tennessee to the limit amid the program’s toughest schedule ever.

As a result, the Saints were not star-struck by top-seeded Louisville in the second round of the NCAA Tournament last March. Powered by its coast-to-coast offense, ninth-seeded Siena nearly pulled the upset, losing by just seven.

This year, Siena could only schedule one team from a major conference – Georgia Tech. And even that may have more to do with Georgia Tech head coach Paul Hewitt doing Siena a favor. He coached the Saints from 1997-2000.

Everybody else refuses to play with fire.

‘We have a 21-game home winning streak, so no one wants to play us in Albany now,’ Buonaguro said. ‘All we could do is go on the road, and Fran doesn’t want to do that. He thinks the program has reached a certain level where we should get home-and-homes. They’re hard to come by. People won’t play us.’

It’s hard to blame them. Outside of the graduated Kenny Hasbrouck, Siena’s roster remains intact. They all can run, and they’re all on the same page. That’s what scares away Syracuse and other ‘glamour’ teams, they say. Continuity.

The one-and-done culture of college basketball feeds the mid-major monster.

‘The one advantage we have is that our guys stay for four years,’ Buonaguro said. ‘Some of those bigger teams don’t have those guys. …I know Syracuse has a great team. They are ranked very high. But they had a lot of turnover. They lost (Eric) Devendorf. They lost (Paul) Harris. So they have to fill some holes. It takes time to develop chemistry.’

Memories of the Saints’ instant classic against Ohio State in Dayton, Ohio in the first round of the Tournament are still fresh. The atmosphere, particularly. For Ohio State, the first round bout was one hour from home. For the green and yellow Saints, it was an 11-hour jaunt. While reminiscing, Franklin peers around the practice facility for effect and points to one of several banners hanging.

‘Imagine this whole building red and that little banner over there green,’ he said. ‘It was nuts.’

Feeding off the negative energy, Siena climbed out of an 11-point deficit in the second half to force overtime. Moore was the hero. The pint-sized point guard nailed one 3-pointer to tie the game with 3.5 seconds left in the first overtime, and then coolly drained another to win with 3.9 seconds left in the second overtime.

Didn’t matter that Moore was 0-fer before the first dagger. In Siena, quick triggers are not reprimanded. They’re demanded. The Saints were sinners against Ohio State, committing 21 turnovers and making just 6-of-24 three-pointers. But here, players are not yanked for aggressive mistakes.

‘We have the guys to run the floor,’ Moore said. ‘We condition for it. Our best offense is getting the ball up and down the floor real quick.’

So the pieces are in place for a deeper run into March. With his quirky shot that so many coaches tried to change, Moore turns the ignition. The ultra-athletic Ubiles usually provides the knockout punch, hovering above the rim. After participating in the LeBron James U.S. Skills Academy this past summer, his confidence is at a new high.

And while Siena’s offense requires players to constantly clear out of the paint, Franklin and junior Ryan Rossiter provide ample grit. On this practice, with a yellow bandage around his knee, Rossiter gets into a scuffle with Seton Hall-transfer Brandon Walters. Siena’s pyrotechnic style isn’t buffered by a soft undertone.

For three straight hours at practice, the intensity doesn’t taper. After all, this is how Siena got noticed in the first place. No use getting lax now that everybody knows who they are.

Players know this winter is their best shot yet.

‘We like the expectations and being ranked in the preseason,’ Moore said. ‘We worked hard for it. We’re definitely not sneaking up on anybody anymore.’

thdunne@syr.edu

Published on November 3, 2009 at 12:00 pm