The Sacred Heart Pioneers are the newest face in an old neighborhood. After a quarter-century in the Northeast Conference, the Pioneers joined the MAAC for the 2024-25 season — and for 2026-27, the conference has a new name: the Metro Conference, the rebrand the MAAC adopted this summer. New league, new name, same mission for a program that has spent six decades building toward its first NCAA tournament appearance.
The setting is pure New England college basketball: the William H. Pitt Center in Fairfield, Connecticut, a 2,100-seat arena that gets loud when the Pioneers get going. Sacred Heart is the second-largest Catholic university in New England, a school that fields 32 Division I teams, and the 2026-27 season marks the 60th season of men's basketball. This is a program with roots — and with ambitions that have outgrown the idea of being a scrappy NEC underdog.
The architect is Anthony Latina, who enters his 14th season leading the program in 2026-27. Latina has been the constant through the conference transition, and his teams have a clear identity: they shoot. Last season's Pioneers ranked fifth in the MAAC in scoring offense at 75.6 points per game — and first in the entire conference in three-pointers made per game at 10.9, a mark that ranked 19th nationally. Four players averaged double figures. When the shots fall, Sacred Heart can beat anyone in the league. When they don't, well, the Pioneers have lived that too.
The debut MAAC campaign set the tone. Sacred Heart finished seventh in its first year in the league and beat Fairfield in the conference tournament to reach the quarterfinals — a statement that the Pioneers belonged. The offense was the calling card all season: Dashon Gittens led the way at 15.0 points per game, Anquan Hill added 14.9 points and 6.2 rebounds before an injury cost him three straight games, Nyle Ralph-Beyer chipped in 14.3, and Yann Farell added 10.3. The losses were often close — 80-72 to Merrimack, 64-61 at Niagara, 82-78 at Canisius, 76-72 to Marist — the kind of games a team wins in year two.
And year two starts with expectations. The Pioneers were picked third in the Metro Conference preseason coaches' poll for 2026-27 — the highest preseason billing of the Latina era — and they led the league with three preseason all-conference selections: Anquan Hill on the first team, Mekhi Conner on the second, and Nyle Ralph-Beyer on the third. Nine players return from last year's roster, joined by two transfers and four freshmen. Continuity plus shooting plus a proven coach is a formula that wins in this league.
The 2026-27 roster has stories within stories. Senior guard Dashon Gittens (Hartford, Connecticut) and senior forward Anquan Hill (Philadelphia) are the established stars — Hill's injury absence last January showed just how much the offense leans on him. Junior forward Yann Farell (Crowley, Texas) and sophomore guard Nyle Ralph-Beyer (West Chester, Pennsylvania) are the other returning scorers. Sophomore guard Mekhi Conner (New Haven, Connecticut) is the homegrown floor leader. Senior guard Griffin Barrouk (Glen Mills, Pennsylvania), sophomore forwards Lucius Gibson-Savadel (Bay Shore, New York) and Alex Woodring (Wyckoff, New Jersey), junior guard Jaden Slaughter (Buffalo), sophomore guard Malik Sheppard (Edgewater, New Jersey) and sophomore guard Fallou Gueye (Raleigh, North Carolina) give the rotation depth and international flavor — with Abdou Yadd arriving from Dakar, Senegal, the Pioneers have athletes from Africa, Europe and across America.
And then there's freshman guard Kevin Pikiell — yes, that Pikiell. The son of Rutgers head coach Steve Pikiell chose Sacred Heart, giving the Pioneers a bloodline connection to one of the Big Ten's great program-builders. The family tie is a fun subplot, but the freshman from Far Hills, New Jersey, will earn his minutes the way everyone does under Latina: by defending and by shooting.
The history lesson is honest. Sacred Heart has never played in the NCAA Division I tournament. The NEC years brought conference-title-game heartbreaks and the perennial question of whether the Pioneers could ever break through. The MAAC move — and now the Metro Conference rebrand — is the program's bet that a bigger stage accelerates everything: recruiting, visibility, March relevance. The league's one-bid reality means the entire season still funnels into three days in March, and Sacred Heart has never been closer to being ready for them.
Latina's 14th team has the pieces the program has always lacked: a top-three preseason projection, three all-conference-caliber players, the nation's 19th-best three-point attack, and a sophomore class that has already survived a season of close losses. In Fairfield, at the Pitt Center, the Pioneers are done being the new kids. The Metro Conference should take notice: Sacred Heart is coming.
One more reason to believe: this program recruits like it belongs. The roster spans Dakar, Texas, Philadelphia, Buffalo and the New Jersey suburbs, and the staff has shown it can find players who fit the system — shooters with size, guards with range, defenders who turn stops into transition threes. In a league where one hot weekend in March erases a decade of history, Sacred Heart finally has the roster, the ranking and the runway. The 60th season could be the one the Pioneers have been waiting for since the first.