For the past three seasons Fairfield alumnus and former Mirror Editor in Chief Ben Doody has covered Rider basketball. On the eve of his annual homecoming to cover the Broncs and the Stags game at Fairfield, he answers five questions on Rider basketball.
1.What happened to Ryan Thompson this year? I saw him as a potential player of the year, but now he might not make any of the three teams.
Great question, and I’m not sure there’s a clear answer. He’s regressed the most as an outside shooter. He went from being one of the best 3-point shooters in the league last year (42 percent) to far below average (31 percent) this year.
As for why that’s happened, I think all the pressure at the beginning of the year got to him to some degree. He entered the year as the preseason Player of the Year and as a player clearly on the NBA radar screen, and he’s admittedly not handled all that as well as he would have liked to.
He did score 25 points Thursday against Manhattan, though, so we’ll see if that’s the start of something.
2. Are you surprised by Rider’s lack of success this year?
Very much so, and I don’t know how anyone couldn’t be.
This team won 19 games last year and returned four starters, including the preseason Player of the Year. The only significant contributor they lost was Harris Mansell, but he played all of last year with an injured elbow, and Rider was still within one miraculous Tyrone Lewis 3 of the MAAC title game.
I thought they’d win 13 or 14 MAAC games this year and be at least some kind of rival to Siena.
Clearly, that hasn’t been how it’s played out.
3. Despite all the issues, do you think Rider still has a chance to turn the season around and finish in at least sixth? How important is the Fairfield game to the chance of that happening?
Can they finish in the top six? Absolutely. I know it’s early to be making concrete predictions, but three teams — Marist, Manhattan and Loyola — are solid bets to finish below them. That means they need to jump only one team to avoid the play-in round.
The Fairfield game is big, but so are the five home games Rider has in February. They’ve been very spotty this year at home, having lost to Iona and Saint Peter’s by a combined 31 points and narrowly beaten Marist and Manhattan. If they want to have a respectable year, they’ll have to knock off a few teams like Niagara, Canisius and Fairfield at home.
4. You’ve been critical of both Rider and Tommy Dempsey this season, what do you think about Dempsey’s future? He was probably on the verge of being a coach who could move on to a better job, but do you think he has regressed this year?
By his own admission, he hasn’t pushed the right buttons this year. It’s also true that his roster has a bunch of 2s and 3s and not a lot of anything else, and for that reason, Rider has been one-dimensional.
He’s been reluctant to change personnel or style, and I think to some extent, the jury is still out on whether that will prove to be the right move. If Rider crumbles down the stretch, people will say he clearly should have made adjustments that he didn’t make. If they turn this thing around by sticking with the same philosophy, he’ll look more justified in staying the course.
As for his future, I think it’s certainly possible this year will set him back, but we’ll have to see. He’s proven to be a very good recruiter, but his biggest season so far came with an NBA lottery pick on the roster, so it’s hard to make any conclusive judgments about him as a game coach. I’m interested to see how the rest of this year plays out and, as importantly, how Rider fares next year without a Thompson on the roster.
5. Is there anyway you see this season ending as a success for Rider, other than a miracle run in the MAAC?
This, too, has been the subject of a ton of the comments and e-mails I’ve gotten over the last few weeks, but the answer — with the key caveat that they don’t win the MAAC tournament — is no.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that they win out and finish 12-6 in the MAAC. Good year? Yes. Up to their expectations? Not even close, given that before the season began, they were adamant that second place would be a major disappointment.
I think barring a MAAC tournament title, this will be a year that got away, and I think Dempsey would acknowledge that himself if you asked him.
At this point, it’s about making sure a disappointing season doesn’t turn into an all-out disaster — another reality Dempsey has acknowledged. They’ve taken a step away from the ledge with wins in their last two games, but still need to get hot down the stretch in order to save face.
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