Let’s go, Gaels! Fans cheering as Saint Mary’s bests Gonzaga / Photo by Tod Fierner for SMC Athletics
Kroner’s Corner: The Gaels Are Heading to Cleveland for March Madness
Four straight trips to the NCAAs. The best rebounding margin in the country. This team is capable of big things at the Big Dance.
No matter what happens in Saint Mary's NCAA Tournament opener against Vanderbilt in Cleveland on Friday, the Gaels have earned every right to take a lot of pride in their 2024–25 season. They have gone 28–5, including 17–1 in West Coast Conference play, which earned SMC a third straight regular-season conference title, the past two of which have been outright. The three consecutive conference titles are a school record, as is a fourth straight trip to the NCAAs.
Through Sunday, the Gaels led the nation in rebounding margin (+10.7 per game) and ranked fifth in the country in fewest points allowed per game at 60.7. Among individual honors, senior point guard Augustas Marciulionis was named the WCC Player of the Year for the second straight season, senior center Mitchell Saxen was named the WCC Defensive Player of the Year for the second straight season, and head coach Randy Bennett was named the WCC Coach of the Year for the fourth straight season.
But here's the rub: Many fans—especially the casual ones—judge a team's success solely by what it does in the postseason. The SMC players understand that, as evidenced by their responses to putting the four straight NCAA berths in perspective.
"Four out of four is amazing," Marciulionis said Sunday after the Gaels held a watch party at UCU Pavilion for the NCAA Tournament selection show. "I'm really glad that we managed to do this well in my time here. Hopefully, we're going to end it with a blast."
Saxen said, "It's a great accomplishment, but it's one thing to go to the tournament, but you want to win games in the tournament. We've done that a couple of times, but we've really got our goal set on breaking through to the Sweet 16."
As a No. 5 seed, the Gaels picked up NCAA wins over Indiana (82–53) in 2022 and over VCU (63–51) in 2023 before falling in the second round in each of those years. Last March, Grand Canyon prevailed 75–66 over the Gaels, who again were a No. 5 seed. This season, SMC is a No. 7 seed, taking on the Commodores, a No. 10 seed.
"I'm not trying to be cocky or anything," Bennett said. "We have a good enough team. We're big, we have a really good point guard, we have good players. We're good enough to beat most teams."
“This team is capable of it.”
The Gaels were good enough to beat Gonzaga twice in the regular season, but they lost the WCC Tournament final to the Zags 58–51 in Las Vegas on March 11. SMC struggled on offense to the tune of missing all 16 of its three-point attempts and committing a season-high 18 turnovers.
That loss to the Zags "exposed some things for us offensively that we needed to work on," Saxen said, "as far as taking care of the ball and our spacing and how we play with two bigs on the court." Those two bigs are Saxen and backup center Harry Wessels, who have played significant minutes together for much of the past month-plus.
The Gaels used the loss to the Zags as motivation during their two practices last week. "We just focused on us, obviously, because we didn't know who we'd be playing," Marciulionis said. "I think we had really good, really competitive, really productive practices."
Said Bennett: "I think our practices had very good intensity…One of our big focuses is let's get our confidence back offensively, play right."
Taking care of the ball will be key for the Gaels, who average committing 9.8 turnovers per game. Vandy forces 14.1 per game and ranked 18th in the country in turnover margin (+3.7 per game) through Sunday. The Commodores average nine steals per game and have five players with at least 30 steals, led by guards Tyler Tanner and Chris Mañon, with 54 apiece.
On Sunday, the winner of the Vandy–SMC game will face the winner of the 15–2 matchup between Robert Morris and Alabama. The Gaels are trying to reach the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2010.
When Bennett took the job in Moraga in 2001, he inherited a team that had gone 2–27 the previous season. In his two and a half decades, Bennett has built the Gaels' program into one of the best on the West Coast. Sustained success requires sustained diligence.
"Having perspective, it's not about if you make the Final Four or the Elite Eight," Bennett said. "It's about those little steps along the way. If you play well at the right time and keep your head right, maybe you can do something like that.
"This team's capable of it."
Echoes of 2010
There are similarities between the Gaels' NCAA draw this year and the one they had 15 years ago when they advanced to the South Region semifinals. In 2010, they also opened in the Eastern time zone, in Providence, Rhode Island. They also played in the 7–10 game, but they were the No. 10 seed and knocked off Richmond 80–71.
Behind center Omar Samhan's 32 points, SMC then upset No. 2 seed Villanova 75–68. The Wildcats had beaten—you guessed it—Robert Morris in the opening round. Against Villanova, guard Mickey McConnell banked home the go-ahead three-pointer with just more than a minute remaining. McConnell now is an assistant coach on Bennett's staff.
Saxen said the current players "definitely hear about" the 2010 postseason from McConnell. "That would be an amazing way to finish off the career. I mean, why not do that? Why not go higher?
"But we know it's going to be a heckuva challenge in the first round. No games are easy here."
Another similarity between the 2010 bracket and this year's, in which the Gaels are in the East Region: The East's No. 1 seed is Duke, which was the No. 1 seed in the South 15 years ago. The Blue Devils won the national title that year.
Scouting Vandy
The Commodores (20–12, 8–10 SEC) won 13 of their first 14 games this season, including an 85–69 win over visiting Cal on November 13. They've gone 7–11 since then and are carrying a three-game losing streak.
Junior point guard Jason Edwards leads Vandy in scoring at 17 points per game. Head coach Mark Byington is in his first season in Nashville after going 82–36 over the previous four seasons at James Madison. Byington employs a nine-man rotation; all nine of those players average at least 18.1 minutes per game, and none averages more than 26.1.
Through Sunday, the Gaels were at 21 in the NET rankings and 22 in KenPom. Vandy's numbers were 48 and 49, respectively. The teams have met four times, with the Commodores owning a 3–1 edge. SMC did win the most recent matchup, a 75–65 decision in Anaheim on November 23, 2022. Saxen scored 19 points in that game.
HOW TO WATCH: The Gaels play Vanderbilt at 12:15 p.m. Pacific. The game will be broadcast live on truTV. Saint Mary’s is hosting a watch party at Dryden Hall and the 1928 pub beginning at noon. Saint Mary’s alumni are hosting watch parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, across California, and beyond.
Steve Kroner has covered Bay Area sports for more than four decades, mainly for KPIX-TV and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has begun working alongside Brian Brownfield on the Gaels' men's basketball telecasts on ESPN+.
