Steve Masiello says Manhattan emerged stronger from chaotic offseason

NEW YORK — As Manhattan coach Steve Masiello sits in his office on a recent Monday afternoon, he looks much different than he did the last time the nation saw him.

He has traded in his tailored suit for a pair of gym shorts and a long-sleeved Under Armour shirt. He has spent the summer growing a beard, a far cry from the clean cut look he normally sports during the season. Most of all, the intense coach who paces and barks orders like a drill sergeant on the sideline is welcoming and ready to discuss a program that he has helped bring into he national spotlight — for better and worse.

In March, Masiello piloted Manhattan to its first NCAA tournament bid in a decade and nearly toppled defending national champion Louisville in the opening round. Days later, he accepted South Florida's head coaching job only to have to return to Manhattan and ask for his old job back after a routine background check revealed he had not completed his undergraduate degree at Kentucky as he claimed on his resume.

“I think when adversity happens, one of two things happen, you either become fragmented or you become closer,” Masiello said. “I think for myself, the players, the president, the athletic director, we became closer. The Manhattan community got closer and better because of it. I’m very thankful for Manhattan and I have a lot of gratitude because they stuck by me. I have a lot of gratitude for them making a decision based on people, not a lot of people do that nowadays.”

It might seem counter-intuitive that Masiello nearly leaving his players could bring the team closer together, but he insists it has. He also says his offseason issues have made him stronger as a person and coach and have provied a convenient teaching tool for his players.

“I can look at my guys in the eye now and say, look, I made a mistake at 21, 22, at your age, that could have cost me my career so the decisions you’re making now can affect you in 15, 20 years,” Masiello said. “I have such a close bond with them now that I never felt so loved and wanted by a group of guys. To hear it coming from your players, it’s special. It has inspired me.”

Last March few people outside of the die-hard college basketball crowd knew much about Masiello and Manhattan, and even fewer expected the Jaspers to challenge defending champion Louisville in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Masiello, however, knew his team had an edge.

Masiello played for Rick Pitino during his time at Kentucky and served as an assistant on his coaching staff at Louisville early in his own coaching career. Masiello knew he had a formidable roster boasting three seniors, Rhamel Brown, George Beamon and Michael Alvarado and a handful of other players who, after losing to Iona in the MAAC championship just a year prior, were getting their first true taste of March Madness.

The Jaspers did more than just challenge Pitino’s Cardinals that night. Manhattan led Louisville by three points with less than four minutes to play in the game before Luke Hancock’s heroics sent the Jaspers and Masiello back to New York. Manhattan had grabbed the attention of the country and Masiello, who had revived the struggling mid-major in three short seasons, became a hot coaching commodity.

Days later, South Florida offered Masiello a five-year deal. The 36-year-old agreed in principle to the contract, but within hours the school rescinded its offer upon discovering the resume discrepancy, sending Masiello into a period of coaching limbo and generating headlines across the country.

With the offseason scandal in the rearview mirror, Manhattan is expected to be near the top of the pack in the MAAC again this season. Despite losing Brown, Beamon and Alvarado, the Jaspers still boast a roster filled with talent, including sharpshooting junior Shane Richards as well as a frontcourt that will rely heavily on junior Ashton Pankey and Cincinnati transfer Jermaine Lawrence.

“It’s not about just one guy,” Masiello said. “I constantly talk about our team culture and team ego. It’s about accountability and peer pressure. I can say whatever I want but when a sophomore is telling a freshman what to do, that’s much more powerful.”

Based on this past offseason’s events, the logical thought would be that because Masiello looked to leave the school once, he may do so again. That hasn't always made recruiting easy, but it has made it clear where Manhattan stands with the prospects it is pursuing.

“What it does is it identifies who you had a chance with and who you didn’t have a chance with that much sooner,” Masiello said. “What I got was a lot of phone calls from people who said ‘Coach, we love you, you’re still our guy, we’re in your corner,’ or I didn’t hear from people. I got to see who was really about Steve Masiello, the Manhattan program and the Manhattan players, not peripheral things.”

Although the program has made significant strides since Masiello took over prior to the 2011-12 season, it is hampered somewhat by playing in the MAAC, traditionally a one-bid league. In each of the past two seasons mid-majors Iona and Manhattan have met in the conference’s championship game, with the winner securing an automatic, and the conference’s only, NCAA Tournament bid.

Masiello believes his team, and Tim Cluess’s just a handful of miles away in New Rochelle, are perfect examples of how the tournament’s selection process is flawed.

“We have to get away from numbers,” Masiello said. “The RPI is extremely manipulative. What we’ve lost as basketball people, and this is no disrespect to the media, we’ve allowed you guys to have too much say when it comes to basketball and the problem is you don’t study the game like coaches do.

“I always say this, ‘Poll the 68 teams and ask them if they want to play us or Iona.’ Of course the seventh place team in the ACC is going to have a better RPI than the second place team in the MAAC, so I think it’s easy to manipulate that. The bottom line is, we lost the eye test. I think we have to get back to that a little bit. That’s my opinion."

But March and its potential slights are a long way away, especially when your team doesn’t open the season for another month and won’t play a home game until December 7.

For now, Masiello and Manhattan are focusing on getting ready to travel down a new road, and hoping that some people still don’t exactly know what a Jasper really is.

“I think the casual fan will be familiar with us,” Masiello said. “I think everyone is going to take us serious, but part of being that underdog is being able to sneak up on people. Hopefully we can get some of that.”