Basketball coach Kevin Baggett named MAAC Coach of the Year

Rider University basketball coach Kevin Baggett was named the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Coach of the Year March 6 at the MAAC Championship Postseason Awards Show.

Baggett is also one of 16 finalists in the running for the 2015 Ben Jobe Award. The Ben Jobe Award is presented annually to the top minority coach in Division I men's basketball. This is the second time in three years Baggett has been a finalist for the award.

Also at the Postseason Awards Show on March 6, junior Zedric Sadler (Detroit, Mich./Cody) was presented with the MAAC 6th Man Award.

A pair of Rider graduate students, Anthony D'Orazio(Camden, N.J./Camden Catholic) and Emerson Bursis (Scotrun, Pa./Pocono Mountain East), were named to the MAAC All-Academic team.

Baggett led the Broncs to a second place finish in the MAAC regular season after the team was picked to finish seventh in the 11-team league. This season Rider won 15 conference games, the most ever for the Broncs in their 18 seasons in the MAAC.

Rider also tied the program record with 21 regular season victories.

“It’s an honor to receive this honor, an honor voted upon by my peers,” said Kevin Baggett.  “It’s a great honor that I don’t take lightly.  I want to recognize all the people that helped me this year, from my staff, our players, the managers, the administration, all those people play a big factor in this.  There are so many people behind the scenes that contributed to the success of the team this year.”

The last time a Rider coach earned MAAC Coach of the Year honors was Tommy Dempsey in 2008. Don Harnum was the MAAC Coach of the Year in 2002. “It’s an honor to have my athletic director, Don Harnum promote me to head coach,” Baggett said.  “Tommy (Dempsey) was one of my mentors and I can’t thank him enough for preparing me to be head coach at Rider.  To follow in both Don’s and Tommy’s footsteps, I can’t thank them enough.  They are a big part of my life.”

This is Baggett’s third season as the Rider head coach. In his first season he led Rider to 19 wins and was a finalist for two National Coach of the Year awards, the Ben Jobe Award (top minority coach) and the Joe B. Hall Award (top first-year head coach).

“After a disappointing end to last season I had to go back and reevaluate things,” Baggett said.  “I talked to my staff about what I could do better as a head coach. There were things I needed to change.”

Sadler played all 31 games for the 21-10 Broncs, starting seven, and was fourth on the team in scoring (7.8), second in three-point field goal percentage (.357), second in steals (1.4), third in assists (1.9) and third in minutes played (24.5).  Sadler is often given the task of guarding the opponents’ top scorer.

“It was hard at first to switch from being a starter to coming off the bench because coming into the season I wanted to be a starter,” Sadler said.  “But I adjusted because as a team that is what we needed me to do.”

D’Orazio, an accounting major with a 3.94 grade points average, has played in all 31 games this season, starting the last 24, and ranks second on the team in assists (2.2), third in steals (1.2), fourth in minutes played (23.8), seventh in scoring (5.1), third in three-point field goal percentage (..339), fourth in three-pointers made (20) and fourth in rebounds (3.0).

Bursis, who majored in both economics and finance and will be attending law school next year, owns a 3.94 grade point average and served as team captain the last two seasons after making the squad as a walk-on.