I was going to add this in the first piece about Marist v. Brady, JMU, Commonwealth of Virginia. But I felt like I wanted a larger forum to discuss this.

First off I know I speak for myself and this site when I say:

• We at Siena Saints Blog thoroughly enjoy basketball, MAAC Basketball and Siena basketball and have been thankful for all the access we have been able to have.
• We are happy to provide posts and information to you, the fans, on Siena freely and (hopefully) without too much bias. I wouldn’t say that we thought that Siena was going to beat Louisville by 10 but we did recognize the facts: Siena had a great shot to beat the Cardinals and almost did.

Obviously it is safe to say that there was not an easy fallout when Brady left to go to James Madison. If you didn’t think so, try to judge the tone from a scathing Poughkeepsie Journal editorial:

Despite signing a four-year contract extension eight months prior, Brady joined James Madison 16 days after losing his final game for Marist.

The coach didn’t just leave three years left on his deal, and didn’t just allegedly contact and steal Marist recruits on his way out the door. He retarded Marist’s progression toward becoming a better basketball program. In the process, he stepped on everyone that helped him leave town.

Look I know that when you are a part of the local paper it is easy to take sides on this one. When you went to Marist and you’re still going to need the Marist access to write stories, it makes it even easier to take this side. But everyone else around takes this side too, there has to be another side. Why not this one:

Can We Forget About (Suing) Brady Already? by Ryan

You might hear from locals that Matt Brady is Marist’s equivalent of Bernie Madoff; he’s the Marist equivalent of a scam artist. He built on someone elses foundation and then walked away as it fell apart. Maybe that makes him more of a mortgage broker or a subprime lender.

If that’s all true then Chuck Martin needs to be Marist basketball’s stimulus package.

Marist’s own shovel ready project has to be invested in as he takes the task of rebuilding this team. He has proven to recruit players to stay long term from the local metro areas of New York City and New Jersey. Best case scenario: Martin can make the school into a regional recruiting power, something other coaches have had a tough time to do.

Look at what Brady did for Marist. Brady recruited players such as one from Virginia who left after a year, a player from the US Virgin Islands who proved to be a role player, a player who didn’t speak much English (if any) and left, junior college players who couldn’t stay longer than two years and a player who thought he was a star and never saw the court. There’s a good chance that Martin will do better for Marist if given the proper resources.

There’s only one reason that Marist would seek to do this: money. Marist wants monetary damages for Brady’s breach of contract. There has to be a better resource for Marist’s money than attorneys fees for a difficult case.

Maybe they should invest in Chuck Martin. Invest in his ability to recruit players. R.J. Hall was on the MAAC All-Rookie team and Martin was able to get a lot of great play out of outgoing senior Ryan Schneider and won double digit games.

It seemed that the school was able to pull some positive news out of the situation when Brady left. When Brady left the school took the image of that he didn’t want to be here anyway, so why not let him go and hire someone who might want to be here for longer than four years.

Marist is going to go through a long rebuilding process but the only way to do it is to focus on what is happening in the present. This basketball team can improve in the next two years to make a run in 2011 or 2012. All of the teams that have won championships in the MAAC have had to face a rebuilding process. There are teams, like Marist and Loyola that have tried the doom and gloom approach, grabbing transfers and hoping star play will carry them, it hasn’t worked. The real way to win in this league is to rebuild from square one.

When Siena fired Rob Lanier, Fran McCaffery took it upon himself to build a team that could contend. His first signee was Kenny Hasbrouck, look where that got them.

More to come tomorrow as we ask a legal expert about these issues…