The Siena Saints spent sixteen years waiting for a March moment like 2008 and 2009 — and then the 2025-26 season delivered the best one since. Under Gerry McNamara, the Saints went 23-12, earned the No. 3 seed in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, and cut down the nets in Atlantic City with a 64-54 win over Merrimack — Siena's first conference championship and NCAA tournament berth since 2010. As a No. 16 seed, the Saints drew overall No. 1 seed Duke in the first round and gave the Blue Devils a genuine scare: Siena led by 13 points with seventeen minutes to play before running out of gas in a 71-65 loss. It was the program's first NCAA win-sized performance in a generation, and it ended the moment the banner came down.
The triumph had a price. Less than a week after the Duke loss, McNamara — the Syracuse legend who had spent two seasons rebuilding Siena into a champion — accepted the head coaching job at his alma mater, Syracuse, and took much of the roster's future with him in spirit if not in body. The Saints, who had finally climbed the mountain, woke up in March 2026 with a vacant office and a roster bracing for the portal. Siena hired Nevada Smith, a veteran of Shaka Smart's staffs at Marquette and Texas, to defend the banner — and Smith walked into one of the trickiest jobs in the country: a defending MAAC champion that had just lost the coach, the star, and the momentum's main character.
The roster churn has been real. MAAC Tournament MVP Gavin Doty, forward Tasman Goodrick and freshman Francis Folefac were all rumored to be following McNamara to Syracuse, and at least one incoming recruit backed out after the departure. What's left is a veteran spine that knows how to win: senior guard Justice Shoats, 7-foot senior center Riley Mulvey, seniors Antonio Chandler, Brendan Coyle and Marcus Jackson, junior guard Mosi Clayton, and a deep rotation of New York-state guards that gives Smith something to mold. The 2026-27 Saints won't be the team that beat Merrimack — they'll be a new team wearing the championship's shadow, and the season is about whether the shadow becomes armor.
To understand what this program is, go back to the golden age. Fran McCaffery's Saints (2005-2010) made Siena the MAAC's premier program with three straight NCAA trips and back-to-back first-round classics that remain the standard for the entire conference. In 2008, the ninth-seeded Saints humiliated fourth-seeded Vanderbilt 83-62. The encore was even better: in 2009, Siena beat Ohio State 74-72 in double overtime — Ronald Moore's driving layup at the horn — for one of the great first-round thrillers in tournament history. Two years, two power-conference scalps, one beloved mid-major. The 2010 team made it three straight dances. McCaffery left for Iowa, the ultimate compliment.
But Siena's March magic predates McCaffery. In 1989, the 14th-seeded Saints stunned third-seeded Stanford 80-78 — one of the classic 14-over-3 upsets — and the program has been to seven NCAA tournaments in all: 1989, 1999, 2002, 2008, 2009, 2010 and now 2026. Five NITs round out a postseason résumé that dwarfs most mid-majors. The Saints play in the 14,500-seat MVP Arena in downtown Albany — a building that shakes with upstate thunder when the program is rolling — and contest the annual Franciscan Cup. Siena basketball is Loudonville's team: a small Franciscan school in New York's capital that has always played bigger than its enrollment.
That identity — guard-driven, fast, fearless, bracket-busting — is the inheritance Smith is trying to protect. The MAAC is the Saints' proving ground, and the wars with Iona and Manhattan are the season's measuring sticks; last year's title flipped the league's pecking order, and everyone is gunning for the champs. The nonconference schedule has the nation's attention for one reason: on October 18, Syracuse visits MVP Arena for an exhibition, and Gerry McNamara walks back into the building he just built into a champion — wearing Orange. It will be the most emotional night in the arena's recent history, a homecoming and a reckoning in one.
What defines Siena in 2026-27 is the strangest championship defense in program history. The banner is real, the coach is gone, the roster is remixed, and the question isn't whether the Saints can repeat — it's whether they can prove 2026 was the start of something rather than a one-off. The MAAC has seen this movie before: a hot team, a poached coach, a fall back to the pack. Nevada Smith's job is to write a different ending. In Albany, they still talk about Ronald Moore's layup. Now they're waiting to find out if the next legend is already on the roster — and whether the 2026 banner was the floor, not the ceiling.