My friends Anthony Terentieff (known as Tieff), Mal Galletta and I went last night to the Iona Lady Gaels game vs Fairfield. It was a wild, often exciting game as the Gaels won in triple overtime, 87-78. The Lady Gaels overcame a 12 point halftime deficit (in the first half, the Fairfield Stags lead was as many as 17, 32-15 at one point), then persevered through two over time periods to eventually pull out the win, despite a staggering 39 turnovers. That perseverance is a reflection of their coach, Anthony Bozzella.
I’ve known Iona women’s coach Anthony Bozzella for over 20 years now. We first met through our mutual good friend, Tieff, who I went to college with at Hofstra. Tieff and Mal went to high school with Anthony. We played many softball games together, spent many a fantasy baseball season making trades with each other, and even one year, the two of us went down to the last day of the season fighting it out for first place. He won on that last day. That fantasy baseball season was an excellent example of his perseverance, of his ability to turn things around. Its been exemplified in his coaching career.
Anthony Bozzella has always wanted to be a coach. And as with so many other coaches, his has been a long road to where he is now. He first started coaching as a volunteer assistant in high school in Glen Cove back in the mid 1980's. When he was an undergraduate at Seton Hall, he coached the St Mary’s high school girls varsity team to three consecutive county titles and was named conference coach of the year in 1988. After college, he was hired as an assistant women’s basketball at C.W. Post College in 1990, responsible for recruiting and scouting. During the off-season, Bozzella would manage a very successful men’s slow pitch softball team in the very competitive Town of Glen Cove League. I was a member of that J.D Gates team (J.D Gates was a bar in Glen Cove) for a couple of years and you could see Bozzella’s ability to recruit talent and his desire to win.
In 1992, Bo, as we call him, got his first heading coaching job at Southampton University. The Colonials were the doormat of the NYCAC, having gone 30-119 over the previous six seasons. Bozzella changed that and within three years, the Colonials were 17-11. He was named coach of the year in the NYCAC in 1995. At the end of his eight year career at Southampton, the Colonials went 120-104.
In 2000, Bozzella was offered the women’s head coaching position at LIU Brooklyn, another team with a history of losing. In fact the Blackbirds hadn’t had a winning season in 21 years. All Anthony Bozzella needed was one year. The Lady Blackbirds went 16-15 in coach Bozzella’s first year. Well if that wasn’t enough, the Blackbirds won three straight games in the NEC tournament and won their league championship and a date in the NCAA tournament with national power Connecticut. It was during this televised NEC tournament, there was a story run on him at halftime of one of the games. His star player described Bozzella as “one crazy cat”. And it is fun to watch the often animated Coach Bozzella on the sidelines. He even has the Bruiser Flint stomp down pat.
A group of us went up to Storrs to watch the first round game between the Blackbirds and the Huskies. I remember Bo telling us that if the Blackbirds should manage to score the first basket of the game, he was going to call timeout so that the national TV audience would see his team ahead. :-) Unfortunately, the Blackbirds didn’t score the first basket, and didn’t score many baskets in their loss to UConn, but that couldn’t dismay the great season the Blackbirds had. For his accomplishment, Bozzella received the New York State Division I Coach of the Year Award. The Blackbirds would follow that up the next year with an 18-12 record, going 13-5 in the NEC conference, but lost in the finals to longtime NEC women’s power St Francis PA.
After going 34-27 in two consecutive winning years of a program that hadn’t won in 21 years before that, in April 2002, Bozzella was hired as the head women’s coach at Iona, another team with a 21 year history of losing. He brought along with him his longtime assistant and friend Christi Abbate, who was the team captain of that Southampton team and had coached with him at LIU Brooklyn. Christi is responsible for coordinating the defenses (she deserves a lot of credit for the press that Iona has implemented this year), coordinating national recruiting, conditioning and NCAA compliance. He also brought along Mandy Myers, a former player of his at LIU Brooklyn. She is responsible for recruiting (Bozzella has given her a great amount of credit for several of the foreign players being brought in for next season) and as the offensive coordinator.
Together, they went out and started on the long journey of turning the Lady Gaels around, doing this the only way they knew how, through hard work, a team philosophy and perseverance. The road wasn’t easy; in their first year, the Lady Gaels won one game. The next year, they won seven games. The third year, six. But in 2005-06 that perseverance and hard work paid off. His nucleus of Regan Pettyjohn, Toni Horvath (who is now an assistant coach at Iona), Tiara Headen, Lauren DeFalco and a newcomer from Germany, Martina Weber, would propel the Lady Gaels to their first winning season in over 20 years. The Lady Gaels went 17-12 and 13-5 in the MAAC. For that, coach Bozzella was named MAAC co-conference coach of the year.
The Gaels followed that up with an even more impressive performance in 2007-07. Led by MAAC conference player of the year, Martina Weber, the Lady Gaels won 21 games and again finished second in the MAAC. They lost a heartbreaking championship game in overtime to Marist, a team that would become the Cinderella of the NCAA women’s tournament making the Sweet 16 by upsetting Ohio State and Middle Tennessee State. The Lady Gaels weren’t done as they made the women’s NIT, their first postseason birth ever. They would win their first round game at home, ironically over the LIU Blackbirds, Coach Bozzella’s former team. The Gaels would lose a tough close second round game to Indiana to finish the season. But as a final footnote to that great season, Martina Weber, the 2006-07 MAAC conference player of the year, was selected in the third round of the WNBA draft by the NY Liberty. Not too many schools can say they had a player in the WNBA, but Iona can.
Now back to the game last night. The Lady Gaels struggled mightily in the first half with 24 turnovers and a 12 point halftime deficit. They struggled to get the ball over midcourt, they struggled to get a shot off as Fairfield played an aggressive zone trap. Coach Bozzella kept shuttling players in and out and only a return press by the Lady Gaels made the halftime score close as it was. Then came one of the most interesting things I had ever seen in all my years of watching college basketball. During the entire 16 minute halftime break, the Lady Gaels remained in the locker room. They never came out on to the court until right as the second half started. They never warmed up, just sprinted out and the five starters came onto the court. In fact, coach Bozzella walked out AFTER the start of the second half.
Well, it must have worked. The Gaels slowly chipped away at the Stags lead, through aggressive defense, good ball movement and the great interior play of center Anna McLean. Fairfield had no answer for McLean. She had 16 points on the game on 7 of 10 shooting from the field, 16 rebounds, blocked numerous shots and altered many more. What also helped was some curious coaching decisions by Fairfield. They abandoned their zone trap, apparently because it requires a lot of energy and the Stags only played 8 players (as opposed to Iona who played 12, 10 of whom played a lot of minutes). And Fairfield, with still a considerable amount of time left at the end of the game, curiously ran down the clock on several possessions, only to come up shorthanded and Iona came back to tie.
Then came the first overtime period. Then came the second overtime period. In both overtime periods, both teams ran down the clock on their possessions and unsuccessfully got shots off with little time left on the shot clock. So much so, that I wanted to go over to Canisius men’s coach and former Hofstra men’s assistant coach Tom Parrotta (who with the rest of his team was waiting for the game to end so they could start the men’s game ) and ask him if this reminds of anything. Yes, that was a little dig about how Hofstra plays with a lead at the end of their games. Remember, the clock is not your friend, points are your friend.
Finally, in that third overtime period, the Lady Gaels pulled away as McLean, Lauren DeFalco, and Thazina Cook (who led the Gaels with 20 points) each made big plays. The end of the second half and the overtime periods were especially redemption for DeFalco who had struggled for much of the game. The Gaels overcame their 39 turnovers by shooting 18 of 23 from the line (as opposed to Fairfield who shot a miserable 6 of 15 from the line) and outrebounded the Stags 48-32. The Lady Gaels now have sole possession of second place in the MAAC at 9-3 after Manhattan’s loss at Loyola, Maryland and are now 15-8 overall.
We didn’t stick around afterwards and went to get some sandwiches at a local eatery because we thought Coach Bozzella was too exhausted to talk after that triple overtime affair. He called me while we were on our way to that eatery, asking why didn’t we stick around. We told him we wanted him to get some rest but he replied that he always has time for us. Well, we talked and said we could come back and bring him a hero. But he had to go with Christi to go over the practices for tomorrow and the game plan vs. Rider on Sunday. It’s the only way that “one crazy cat” knows for the past 20 years. Hard work and perseverance. Its paid off for Bozzella and the Lady Gaels.
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