Photos: Liz Flynn
Jacob Rigoni and Rich Kelly lead the Bobcats to their first tournament win in four seasons.
Postseason basketball is often a different animal. Every play is put under the cruelest of microscopes, with team poise and experience consistently brought into question.
Experience was a major question mark hovering over Baker Dunleavy and the Bobcats when they arrived in Albany, seeking their first MAAC Tournament win since 2014. Dunleavy, coming down the stretch of his first season as a head coach, called upon freshmen Jacob Rigoni and Rich Kelly to guide the team to a win over Siena on the Saints’ home floor.
Well, he didn’t call them freshmen when he addressed the duo prior to the tournament opener on Thursday night. According to Dunleavy, Kelly and Rigoni no longer freshmen. That label is removed once they take the floor.
“I reiterate it all the time and it’s true,” Dunleavy said about his rally cry to Rigoni and Kelly. “It’s not just because they’re special and good players, but because they’ve played so many minutes. I’ve thrown them into the fire and they’ve run with it.”
When you’re thrown into a fire, you eventually catch fire. The flames clung to Kelly and Rigoni on Thursday night.
The two “freshmen” combined for 35 points and shot 8-for-14 from three to lead the Bobcats to a 67-58 win and their first conference quarterfinal berth in four years. The Bobcats used a red-hot shooting start to jump out to a 21-5 lead and never looked back. Rigoni and Kelly’s fingerprints were all over the unexpected offensive outburst.
“I’ve only seen that look a couple times,” Siena head coach Jimmy Patsos said of the Bobcats’ early run. “But they had that look in their eyes that they weren’t going to miss.”
Rigoni and Kelly combined to score eight of the Bobcats’ first 10 points of the game to kick-start the offensive onslaught. The team made their first five three-point attempts, three of them coming courtesy of the Baby Bobcats, who showed senior poise on the season’s biggest stage.
“It was just another opportunity to come out and play,” Rigoni said after the win. “My teammates have great confidence in me, and we’ve put in the work all year. There’s no reason to not be confident right now.”
Given how Rigoni and Kelly performed when the lights shined the brightest, there’s no reason for Dunleavy or anyone around the Bobcats to not be confident in their promising youngsters, who seem to be peaking at just the right time.
“All we’ve talked about since June was to get some chemistry and play our best basketball at the end,” Dunleavy said. “It didn’t start pretty, and we’ve taken our bumps, but I think we’re playing our best basketball right now.”
The team chemistry has improved since the beginning of conference play. Rigoni’s three-point stroke made him a fixture in the starting lineup since mid-January. His 45-percent three-point shooting in the regular season was third-best in the MAAC. That number is close to 50 if you count Thursday night’s performance.
Meanwhile, Kelly was pushed into the action from the start of the regular season. He finished the year ranked second in the MAAC in minutes played, and his ever-increasing ball security and improved court vision made him a unanimous selection to the MAAC All-Rookie team. Those who have watched him from the start know how far he has come in his playmaking abilities.
“He’s a kid you would have picked last in pickup if you were choosing from our teams,” Patsos said of Kelly’s first impressions. “But Kelly is really good. He really controls the game and the tempo.”
The Bobcats were also a team picked last, as the conference preseason poll reflected. Those who voted deserve a pass. After all, nobody expected Dunleavy’s freshman to evolve the way they have. The road may come to an end against Canisius on Friday, but thanks to Rigoni and Kelly, the future in Hamden is burning bright.
Out of the embers of the fire they were hurled into back in November, Rigoni and Kelly have emerged tougher and wiser than anyone could have expected for a pair of freshmen. If only they knew they weren’t really freshmen. That word is merely a misleading label.
