College Hoops Top 50

By now, everybody knows Saint Mary’s. The little college in Moraga, CA, has seen some of the most consistent success on the college basketball map over the past two decades. The Gaels have established their reputation as a tough, physical team that plays outstanding defense and won’t make mistakes to beat themselves. Under legendary head coach Randy Bennett, SMC has qualified for the NCAA Tournament ten times before. Even so, there are long-awaited goals for the Gaels to reach, and this season may be their best opportunity to make a run in more than a decade.

To start things off, this year’s West Coast Conference regular season title had to feel particularly rewarding. Remember back to the spring of 2024? Saint Mary’s didn’t just lose its ace recruiter when assistant coach Justin Joyner departed for Michigan. Leading scorer Aidan Mahaney and skilled forward Joshua Jefferson – each with two years of eligibility remaining – left via the transfer portal for UConn and Iowa State, respectively. Such things had previously been unheard of under Bennett, but in this era of unregulated player movement, wild upheaval has become the standard. Though daunted, Bennett and his staff circled the wagons and did some portal9ng of their own. The result was a replacement sophomore and brand-new star: former Arizona forward Paulius Murauskas.

It should also be pointed out that, due to extra eligibility and the outstanding quality of Bennett’s player development program, the cupboard wasn’t left bare this spring following SMC’s transfer attrition. This winter, Augustas Marčiulionis has established himself as an all-time Gael great by leading the team to back-to-back WCC crowns as well as winning consecutive league Player of the Year awards. His counterpart in the post, fifth-year center Mitchell Saxen, has grabbed more offensive rebounds than any player in conference history, and he enters his fourth straight Big Dance as the reigning two-time WCC Defensive Player of the Year. Meanwhile, Luke Barrett is the successor to a proud lineage of tough-as-nails Saint Mary’s forwards from Australia and averaged the most minutes played per contest of any WCC player this year. It’s their combined experience that the Gaels will lean upon most of all, and the magnitude of what this bunch has accomplished isn’t lost on Marčiulionis.

“The first couple years you don’t know really what’s going on. You make the tournament . . . and I thought it might be normal,” Marčiulionis, who’s affectionately known as ‘Goose’ in Moraga, told the Mercury News this past weekend. “Once you learn more about college basketball, you realize how difficult it is, how small the room for error is…Four out of four (tournament appearances in his four seasons) is amazing. Hope we end it with a blast.”

Now comes the biggest question about this proud program which leaves no detail unconsidered: can they win big in the NCAA Tournament?

The Gaels have been to the Big Dance ten times before under Bennett, but they’ve only played on the tournament’s second weekend once. And that appearance came all the way back in March of 2010. Last year, Saint Mary’s suffered the ignominy of sweeping the WCC regular season and tournament crowns just to fall victim to a classic ’12 over 5′ seed matchup in a tilt against Grand Canyon. It’s become clear that this season, SMC has one of their most well-rounded teams of all. Will it be the bunch that breaks back into the Sweet Sixteen?

Before anything else, the Gaels – a 7-seed this year – will have to defeat 10-seed Vanderbilt. The Commodores are fresh off of running the SEC gauntlet and won’t be surprised by much that SMC does, but this game should be a study of rosters constructed with rather different ideals in mind. Beyond, you know, winning.

Saint Mary’s plays a famously composed, precise, unselfish, and, well, slow game. Bennett’s preference for employing a steady, measured, clock-consuming offense is well-known, and it’s not something that most foes are built to match. Same goes for the way SMC forces other teams to execute against a tight, physical defense in the halfcourt and then try to out-work them for rebounds. This year, the dribble-drive creativity of Marčiulionis plus spark-plug scoring guards (Jordan Ross and Mikey Lewis) and the rapid evolution of Murauskas have combined to make the Gaels more versatile than they’ve been in the past. Lewis has been this team’s most dangerous outside shooter, while Ross is more likely to be seen putting it on the floor and manufacturing looks for his friends. Comfortable in the post, Murauskas is expanding his game out to the three-point arc. He’s also capable of driving other forwards to the rim when he’s not scoring easy buckets on cuts or tipping in an offensive board. SMC’s excellent defense is the same as it ever was, and for the second year in a row the Gaels are among the top ten teams in the nation in both offensive and defensive rebounding.

On the other side, there were lots of times when Vandy played 4 or even 5-out this year. SMC likes to play big as a general rule, and their size and tenacity at positions 3-5 make life difficult for pretty much all of their opponents. Given the way they’ve launched jumpers throughout their campaign, the Dores will naturally try to win this game from behind the three-point arc. If the Gaels can drag things inside, though, it’s going to mean choppy seas for Vandy.

Still, with Vanderbilt’s propensity for playing small, they’ll try to negate some of SMC’s advantages by simply limiting the personnel on the court. After all, everyone is a point guard at Vanderbilt. The Gaels like to regularly feature two posts in the same lineup with Saxen and rising seven-footer Harry Wessels on the floor together. Will Murauskas be able to keep up with speedy Vandy scoring star Jason Edwards, Jr? ‘Goose’ has the size and length to cause issues for the smaller Edwards and deny him prime looks from the land of trey. Can he stay in front of Edwards, though? Can Ross and Lewis match up with Vandy’s bevy of bigger, stronger, more experienced guards?

Vandy’s offense is based upon probing for mismatch opportunities off the bounce. They break up the opposing defense by having everyone take turns as both screener and ballhandler in pick-and-roll sets, as well as the more traditional approach of hitting deep jumpers. Just as much as this will be a matchup of contrasting size, it will be a matchup of contrasting paces. The Gaels are as comfortable slowing things down as anyone out there – SMC ranks seventh-to-last nationally in Evan Miya’s True Tempo statistic.

Vanderbilt plays a much faster style, and in this contest, figures to really ratchet things up in order to discomfit the Gaels. It’s not to say that Vandy lacks a post presence. They have a breakout star up front in undersized post Devin McGlockton. Head coach Marc Byington’s Dores are undersized compared to Saint Mary’s, but McGlockton in particular is a great offensive rebounder. McGlockton holds the distinction of having led the rough-and-tumble SEC in offensive rebounding percentage for the season. The Dores will try to press any advantages they find off the bounce and seek opportunities in transition, but here’s the problem: SMC doesn’t really let people speed them up. It’s kinda their thing to impose their tempo on the other guys. Vanderbilt has also done great work in transition after forcing a turnover (15th nationally with 9.0 steals per game), but Saint Mary’s takes great care of the ball.

If the Gaels can make it past Vanderbilt, it’s exceedingly likely that they’ll face 2-seed Alabama in the Second Round. The Crimson Tide, in addition to having made their own run through the SEC, boast one of the nation’s most complete rosters. Bama is positively loaded with scoring options and the Tide their own desire to play with pace. In fact, Alabama plays so fast that, even though they’re a solid defensive outfit (Bama ranks 31st in the country in 3FG% defense), they give up the most shot attempts per game to opponents of anyone in the nation. Saint Mary’s would seem uniquely unqualified to take advantage of that, but the Gaels’ comfort in forcing other teams to grind it out at a glacial pace may be a stumbling block for the deep and talented Tide. One thing is clear: after their years of success and constant tussles against other top teams, Saint Mary’s won’t be intimidated.

“It’s a great accomplishment, but it’s one thing to go to the tournament, but you want to win games in the tournament,” Saxen told Steve Kroner for SMCGaels.com following the team’s fourth-straight tournament selection. “We’ve done that a couple of times, but we’ve really got our goal set on breaking through to the Sweet 16.”

“I’m not trying to be cocky or anything. 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,” Bennett explained his team’s confidence while also maintaining perspective. “It’s not about if you make the Final Four or the Elite Eight. 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.”

The Gaels know that ‘Yeah but’ statements have been dogging them through their years, because despite their great consistency, SMC has yet to make an inarguable, Gonzaga-like statement in the most famous month of the year. Both for their own pride and to step out from the shadows of their once (and future?) conference foes, Saint Mary’s must make a resounding statement in the Big Dance. This team is set up to accomplish the further greatness that others have fallen short of, and they know it.