Beaver Falls, PA – Most head coaches will tell you that a pre-season poll is about as valuable as the paper it’s written on. In fact, if a team is at or near the top of a pre-season poll, most coaches will say it means absolutely nothing. For Geneva’s men’s and women’s basketball teams, the pre-season poll may be used as a motivating factor for the upcoming campaign as neither team was shown much respect from the AMC coaching contingent.
The men’s team, which finished 14-16 overall and qualified for the AMC tournament, received just 15 total points from the six head coaches and are picked to finish fifth in the six-team AMC North. On the women’s side, the Golden Tornadoes were chosen to finish fourth in the eight-team league with 42 points.
Geneva’s women lost three very important seniors from a year ago. In fact, Jen Rawding, Ali Cananzi and Megan Gallagher accounted for over 3500 combined points in their four years. On the men’s side, Nate Conley is gone after finishing his career as a 1000 point scorer and one of Geneva’s all-time leaders in assists.
Both Geneva head coaches, Jeff Santarsiero and Ron Galbreath, see the pre-season poll for exactly what it is, a pre-season poll. “It really doesn’t mean a thing in the whole scheme of things,” said Santarsiero. “However, we will make it known to our guys and I’m sure it will certainly work to motivate us to prove some people wrong.” Galbreath agreed, “It’s no secret that we lost a big part of our offense to graduation. However, we have some key components in place for the upcoming year and we are very anxious to get going.”
Geneva’s men open the season at Franciscan University on November 8th. The women’s team begins play at Ursuline College on November 14th.
Geneva provides the versatility for accounting students to meet all the requirements for the new CPA licensure exam either as part of their bachelor’s degree or their master’s degree.
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