McNamara’s process of success: First-year Siena coach off to 3-2 start

It’s been quite the start to the season for Gerry McNamara as head coach of the Siena Saints. His journey from northeast Pennsylvania to Syracuse has helped define the person he is on and off the court.

Growing up in Scranton, Pa., McNamara was the youngest of four siblings.  

“I got my butt whooped a lot by my older brother when I was a kid,” McNamara said. 

It was the competition from his siblings, and coaching from his father that made him fall in love with basketball. But it also created a relentless process to win. 

“By that point, I had already loved it. I grew up around it,” he said. 

That effort led to McNamara earning two-time AP Pennsylvania State Player of the Year awards, and eventually a scholarship to Syracuse University. Not only did he win a national championship, but McNamara never missed a single game during his four-year career with the Orange. 

“The left ankle’s not feeling too great these days,” McNamara said. “135 straight starts, probably should have set a few of them out. My senior year, I had stress fracture for about three-quarters of the season in my groin. So I still feel some of those to this day.”

Now in his first year as a head coach with the Siena men’s basketball team, McNamara is trying to create a group with that same toughness and tenacity. The Saints got off a great start grinding out its first three wins before dropping its last two games. 

“I wanted a group that was going to fight to the end. I didn’t think we had our best game the other night, but we didn’t stop fighting,” said McNamara, a few days after the 70-60 loss to UAlbany. “We never let the game slip until the last few minutes when we just couldn’t get a stop or couldn’t make a play offensively or make a shot.”

It’s all part of the process that started in the spring when McNamara was officially hired to be Siena’s next head coach. When he arrived in April, he was living in a Cohoes apartment while his family remained in Syracuse as his children finished school. They later joined him in Loudonville, along with several new players like Peter Carey, Justice Shoats, Major Freeman, and Marcus Jackson. 

“It didn’t take very long to understand that the brand that I knew was strong here and the support that I knew was elite here,” McNamara said. 

His lengthy career as an assistant coach at Syracuse prepared him for this. He was first working under legendary head coach Jim Boeheim and then Adrian Autry. McNamara says it was important for his maturation process.

“We were all family, and it created the model of what I always said, if I had an opportunity, like I have now to be a head coach, it was the model that I wanted in my own program is the model that I came from, which is about family,” he said. 

McNamara’s arrival to Siena has certainly created a lot of buzz. But he refuses to look ahead. McNamara is only focused on having a good practice leading up to their next game. It’s all about the process. 

“Can you bounce back from losses? Can you accept certain things? Can you accept criticism? Can you get better from it? Those are all the things that my team is going to need to do moving forward,” he said. “Our team’s going to have to come together after losses like this. And they’ve shown nothing but maturity since we’ve been together. So I fully anticipate our group changing things around.”