After beating perennial powerhouse Iona in the MAAC title game, Mount St. Mary’s is headed back to the NCAA Tournament under first-year coach Donny Lind.
It didn’t take long for Donny Lind to make an impact on the Mount.
The first-year head coach has Mount St. Mary’s back in the Big Dance after the Mountaineers pulled off three consecutive upsets in MAAC Tournament. Once a video coordinator for Shaka Smart’s Final Four team at VCU, Lind was more recently an assistant coach under Mike Young’s UNC Greensboro and Radford squads. But he’s actually no stranger to his current program, serving as an assistant during Jamion Christian’s tenure at the Mount.
Now, Lind gets his first view of March Madness from the big chair.
Coming into the league tournament as just the No. 6 seed, the Mount beat 3-seed Marist, 2-seed Merrimack and 4-seed Iona in consecutive days to earn its first NCAA Tournament berth since 2021. The first two games were nail-biters — the Mountaineers beat Marist by four and Merrimack by two — but they left no doubt in the championship game. The Mount finished on a 17-6 run, sparked by 3-pointers from Javon Ervin, Dola Adebayo and Dallas Hobbs. Those shots stretched the lead to 10, proving insurmountable in what would become a 63-49 win.
The First Four round in Dayton is likely the next stop for Lind and the Mountaineers, which raises the chances of the first-time head coach picking up an NCAA Tournament win in his first try.
More Heat Check CBB:
- Bracketology: Projected field | Bubble Watch
- Tournament Index: Complete March Madness projections
- Full conference tournament TV schedule
Adebayo leads a balanced Mountaineer attack
Adebayo and Hobbs being key cogs in the Mountaineers’ operations is nothing new. They are the team’s leading scorers at 13.1 and 12.4 points per game, respectively, and lead a group of four players averaging double figures.
Sixth man Terrell Ard (10.9 ppg) and starting forward Jedy Cordilia (10.2 ppg), the latter of whom punctuated the MAAC title win with a thunderous dunk, are the others. Adebayo, Ard and Cordilia each average more than seven rebounds, too, while Hobbs (3.3 apg) and Xavier Lipscomb (4.5 apg) handle distribution duties. Meanwhile, starting wing Carmelo Pacheco led the MAAC and was top-10 in the country in 3-point percentage, knocking down 77 threes at a 46.4 percent clip. (Unfortunately for the Mountaineers, Pacheco is currently sitting with a broken finger he suffered in the regular-season finale, while Ard is out after recently undergoing Achilles repair surgery.)
One of the issues with all this balance is that it often comes at the expense of recognition.
Despite all the players putting up solid stats on a 22-win squad, Adebayo was the only Mountaineer to earn All-MAAC honors, finishing as a second-teamer. The 6-8 junior deserved the accolade, to be sure, after nearly doubling his scoring average from last season and stepping up into a full-time leading role.
Defense and rebounding wears opponents down
Befitting a branch off the Shaka Smart coaching tree, Lind has managed to build a relatively strong defensive profile at the Mount.
No, the defense doesn’t force turnovers like those VCU ‘Havoc’ units did — far from it, actually, as the Mountaineers rank 286th in this department. On the other hand, they do rank in the top 100 in effective field goal defense, defensive rebounding percentage, defensive free-throw rate and 3-point percentage allowed. Who needs turnovers when you can force bad shots, limit second chances, and keep opponents off the free-throw line?
The rebounding effort extends to both ends of the floor, too. While not quite as impressive statistically, the Mount boasts a top-150 offensive rebounding rate. The second chances are extremely important in light of the Mountaineer offense turning the ball over at one of 10 highest rates in the country.
It’s also worth noting when the defense and rebounding take place. According to CBB Analytics, Mount St. Mary’s ranks in the 96th percentile for defensive efficiency in the first half of games, but that plummets to a 29th-percentile mark in the second half. That’s when the offense takes over, jumping from the 2nd-percentile all the way to 75th on either side of halftime. The rebounding rates work similarly, with the defense clamping down early (95th-percentile) before the offensive effort takes over late (88th).
By wearing teams down early, the Mount’s offense finds more room to operate in the second half — a dynamic that played out in real time as the Mountaineers rode their late run to beat Iona in the MAAC Tournament title game. If Mount St. Mary’s pulls off the unthinkable, it likely will be due to catching an unsuspecting 1-seed off-guard and out of breath.
Similar NCAA Tournament efficiency profiles
Tournament Index evaluation
As it stands, Mount St. Mary’s is a projected No. 16 seed by our bracketology at Heat Check CBB and on the Bracket Matrix. The Tournament Index rates the Mountaineers as below-average as compared to the No. 16 seeds that made the Round of 64 over the past 10 seasons. If they move up a line, they would rate as weaker than any other No. 15 seed from the last 10 years.
It’s worth noting that the entire 16-seed line is down this year. Of the projected No. 16 seeds, only Norfolk State has a TI power rating (50.2) above the 10-year average of 48.8, while SIUE (48.4) falls just below that line. Nevertheless, the Mount (45.7) sits higher than both American (45.5) and Saint Francis (41.6), as well as both SWAC finalists (Jackson State, 45.5; Alabama State, 45.1). Should the Mountaineers wind up in Dayton, they likely would be the strongest of the No. 16 seeds playing in the First Four.
The TI projects an average of 0.05 wins for Mount St. Mary’s given its projected seed and strength.
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