The Siena Saints place their 24-game home winning streak on the line when they host the Rider Broncs, Wednesday night December 23rd at 7:00 pm.

The game is the second conference game of the year for the Saints, who won 73-60 on the road over Iona on December 7th.  The Saints have not played since losing 82-65 at Northern Iowa last Saturday, so they should have had plenty of time to get some rest while finishing up finals for the semester.

Wednesday night will also mark the debut of junior guard Kyle Griffin, who had to sit out the first half of this season for eligibility reasons.  Griffin transferred from LaSalle, where he played 15 games as a freshman before being sidelined with a leg injury.  Griffin was highly recruited out of high school, and he is going to be looked upon to add some points, and depth, off the bench.

In the interim since the Northern Iowa game, coach Fran McCaffery has emphasized in interviews that the team spent most of its time working on team defense – while the Saints have shown flashes of brilliance defensively, the fact remains that they have allowed the four teams they lost to to shoot better than 60% from the field in each of the second half of each of those games.  The Saints can obviously score the ball, but they need to learn to play 40 minutes of lockdown defense as a team to be able to pull out close wins, and run away from those teams that they are suppossed to beat.

Rider enters the game with a record of 8-5, owning a 1-0 record in conference play with a 55-51 win against Marist.  The Broncs opened the season with an impressive win over then 18th ranked Mississipi St.  They have also played BCS conference teams Virginia, Kentucky, and Rutgers, but weren’t able to get a win out of those three.

Rider boasts the MAAC conference preseason player of the year in Ryan Thompson, who is averaging 15.1 points per game to lead the Broncs, while averaging 5.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game.  Thompson is a threat to fill up the scoresheet every night, but he leads a team made up of multiple players who average double digits in scoring.  Junior forward Mike Ringold is averaging 10.6 ppg and 7 rebounds a game and junior guard Justin Robinson is averaging 13.1 ppg and 2.7 assists per game.  Talented sophomore forward Novar Gadson is averaging 12.6 ppg and 7 rebounds per game.  Rider is a physical team who can score and rebound the ball, and they are gunning for the Saints.  Rider is a contender for the MAAC conference title this year, and a win Wednesday night would be pivotal this early in the Saints’ conference schedule.

KEYS TO THE GAME

• Defense, defense, defense: If the Saints have spent their time in practice working to improve their defense, they’re going to have a nice test trying to keep Thompson and his teammates off the scoreboard.  40 minutes of solid play would go a long way towards getting the Saints ready for their conference slate.
• Home-cooking: The Saints need to continue to defend their home court, as this game marks the first of a four game home stand.  Stacking up wins are what the Saints need to do for the rest of the season, so winning the games they can win at home is paramount.
• They call it the Charity Stripe for a reason: if the Saints are going to win the MAAC conference and the rest of their non-conference games, they need to improve their free throw shooting.  The reason they lost the four games this year were because of two reasons – defense and free throw shooting.  While they have been working to improve their defense, they must spend extra time outside of practice on their free throws.  If they don’t, the season could go sideways quickly.