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Now that the college basketball season has come to an end I would like to congratulate the Kansas Jayhawks on reaching the pinnacle of the sport. Before we move on and start getting ready for next season we must first look back at one of the most successful seasons in the history of Rider basketball.

Our 2007-08 team broke the school record for wins with 23 and won the MAAC regular season championship for the third time in the last seven years.

Jason Thompson earned numerous post season awards including MAAC Player of the Year, AP honorable mention All-American, Collegeinsider.com All-American, and MAAC Defensive Player of the Year.

Sophomore guard Ryan Thompson was named to the Collegeinsider.com Mid-Major All-American team as well as 2nd team All-MAAC.
Junior guard Harris Mansell was named 3rd team All-MAAC and freshman forward Mike Ringgold was named to the MAAC All-Rookie team.

March 3, 2008

The Broncs won the regular season MAAC Championship yesterday in front of a sellout crowd on senior day at Alumni Gym. The win was our 21st of the season which ties the 1993-94 team for most in school history.

We will look to break the record in the MAAC tournament quarter-finals Saturday night at 7:30pm against the winner of the first round game between Iona and Canisius.

Also the MAAC All-Conference and All-Rookie teams were announced today and the Broncs were well represented. Senior Jason Thompson was named to the first-team, Sophomore Ryan Thompson was named second-team, Junior Harris Mansell was named third-team, and Freshman Mike Ringgold was named to the all-rookie team.

Congratulations to those guys on great seasons.

Jason is a finalist for MAAC Player of the Year and Mike is a finalist for MAAC Rookie of the Year. Those awards will be announced at a awards reception at the MAAC tournament on Thursday.

It is an exciting time to be a Bronc fan and I hope you all join us this weekend as we attempt to become the first Rider team in fourteen years to play in the NCAA Tournament.

February 11, 2008

Things have really kicked into high gear over the past couple of months for the Broncs and our fans. First place is the goal for every college basketball team and right now we are tied with Siena for first place in the MAAC with an 11-3 record.

Overall we have 18 wins which is just three wins shy of the school record (21) and we are trying to be the first Rider team in 14 years (1994) to make it to the Big Dance. The mood around campus has been electric and we are consistently playing in front of standing room only crowds at the Broncs Zoo.

The Broncs are currently ranked #22 in the country in Collegeinsider.com's Mid-Major Top 25. Our star center (Jason Thompson) is having an outstanding year once again in his quest to become an All-American and first round NBA draft pick, but it has been the supporting cast that has really taken a step big forward from last season.

Jason's sophomore brother Ryan is playing great basketball this year as well as junior guard Harris Mansell. Junior Lamar Johnson and senior Kamron Warner have been contributing big minutes off the bench and the freshman class of Justin Robinson, Mike Ringgold, Matt Griffin and Pat Mansell are having huge impacts on our program during their freshman seasons.

It has been a lot of fun so far this season and we are playing great basketball heading into March Madness!.

October 19, 2007

My favorite time of year is here. After all the waiting the season is on us and the Broncs are preparing extremely hard to make this a season to remember.

We kicked off practice last Friday night with MIDNIGHT MAACNESS at the Broncs Zoo and nobody does it better than Rider. The students starting lining up outside the Zoo at 7:00PM and by the time the doors opened at 10:30PM the place was on fire. For the first time in years we had to turn people away because we could not get another person in the gym. It was great to see all of our fans back in the gym getting excited about Rider Basketball!

We open the season on the road with a tough non conference game against Murray State before coming back to the Zoo for our home opener against Delaware on November 17th. We open our MAAC schedule on the road at defending champion Niagara on December 6th.

This should be a fun season in Broncland and I hope you all come out and join us.

Finally be sure to check out the new website devoted to Jason Thompson:

http://www.jasonthompson1.com

August 17, 2007

Summer is coming to an end shortly and the balls will be bouncing before you know it. Summer school ended yesterday and our players returned home until Labor Day. We have had a busy summer and the guys have worked extremely hard to get prepared for what should be a very exciting season in Bronc country.

Jason Thompson just returned from Las Vegas where he was participating in the Pete Newell summer camp with some of the best college players in the country. Jason also spent time this summer in Akron, Ohio at Lebron James camp and in Phoenix, Arizona at Amare Stoudamire's camp.

Harris Mansell just returned from a foreign trip to Belgium where he played on a college all-star team that went undefeated. The rest of our players were hard at work everyday in the Broncs Zoo and in the weight room at Rider.

Once the players come back in September we will get right to work with our individual workouts and continue our strength and conditioning program. Midnight Maacness is on October 12th this year and away we go. I can't wait to get started

May 18, 2007

Things have finally begun to slow down so I wanted to give everybody an update about some things we are excited about within the Rider Basketball program. In April we announced our recruiting class for the class of 2007. 5'11 guard Matt Griffin from St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia, 6'2 guard Justin Robinson from Blair Academy in Blairstown, New Jersey (originally from London, England), and 6'7 forward Mike Ringgold from the Winchendon School in Massachusetts (originally from Philadelphia, PA) have all signed national letters of intent to play for us here at Rider. Matt and Mike will be here with us on campus in the beginning of July for summer school. Justin will be representing his country (Great Britain) at the European Basketball championships in Warsaw, Poland this summer. We wish him the best of luck.

On a personnel note this has been a very exciting time for me as well. May 8th my wife Amy and I welcomed our third child into the world. His name is Brian and he is healthy, happy and doing very well.

We are also excited that on May 11th Terrence Mouton was awarded his degree in Business Administration. We are very proud of Terrence's accomplishments both on the court and in the classroom while he was here with us at Rider. We wish him the very best going forward and we thank him for all the hard work and sacrifices he made as a member of our basketball program the past four years.

This is an exciting time to be a Rider Basketball fan!.

March 7, 2007

The Broncs season came to an end this past weekend in the MAAC Tournament. After beating Iona in the 1st round on Friday the Broncs ran into red hot Niagara in the Quarterfinals and despite a spirited second half comeback ran out of gas late in the game and Niagara advanced. Niagara went on to win the MAAC Tournament Championship and will represent our league in the NCAA Tournament next week. Rider ended the season with a winning record at 16-15 and finished 9-9 in the MAAC conference. We had one of the biggest turn arounds in the country after finishing 8-20 overall and 4-14 in the MAAC in 2005-2006. The Broncs also finished as the only Division I basketball program (out of seven) in the state of New Jersey with a winning record this season.

One of the bright spots was the continued emergence of Rider big man Jason Thompson who finished the year as one of only three players in NCAA Division I basketball (Kevin Durant- Texas and Nick Fazekas- Nevada) to average 20 points and 10 rebounds per game. Jason was named to the 1st Team All-MAAC and 2nd Team All-District. With only one senior (Terrance Mouton) on this year's roster, the future is very bright in Lawrenceville, NJ.

January 30, 2007

It is time to get the boys ready for the stretch run. February is the time of year when teams are hoping to start playing their best basketball of the season and after escaping last night with a 54-53 win against MAAC rival St. Peter's on the road we are hoping to start peaking at the right time.

The win last night moves the Broncs into a tie for 4th place in the MAAC standings at 6-5. It also moved our overall record to 12-9 which is the third best mark in the MAAC conference after finishing 10th a year ago. I think it is fair to say the the Broncs are moving in the right direction.

A special congratulations to Jason Thompson who was named the MAAC Player of the week last week for his dominant 31 point, 16 rebound, 7 blocked shots game in a big win over Siena. In that same game point guard Terrence Mouton scored his 1,000th career point.

We travel to Iona on Saturday before hosting Marist, Manhattan, and Canisius during a three game home stand next week at the Broncs Zoo. Hopefully we can continue are climb up the MAAC standings.

January 16, 2007

The MAAC race is heating up and the young Broncs find themselves right in the middle of the fire. After being picked to finish 7th in the pre-season poll we are off to a good start with a 4-3 conference record as well as a 10-7 overall record which is the second best overall record in the MAAC.

We are coming off a good week. Playing three conference games in six days is always very challenging but despite a one point loss on Sunday to Niagara we finished the week with a 2-1 record. Our next three MAAC games will come against teams that are ahead of us in the standings. Thursday we hit the road to play a big game against Manhattan (5-1 in MAAC) followed by home games against Loyola (5-1 in MAAC) and (Siena 5-2 in MAAC).

The Loyola game will be televised Sunday afternoon on MSG and ESPN Full Court at 4:00PM. The next three games will go along way in determining if the Broncs can prove people wrong this season and stay near the top of the MAAC standings. Stay tuned.

January 2, 2007

The non-conference season is over and the New Year means the start of the second season -- The conference season.

We closed out 2006 with a tough loss at Notre Dame, but still managed to finish with a 7-5 record. We had some difficult losses, but we also had a lot of nice wins. In late November we rallied to beat Drexel, which has only lost one other time this season. We also posted road wins at Boston University, Delaware, FDU and Binghamton, which went into Miami and beat the Hurricanes.

Overall I feel pretty good about where we are, as we prepare for MAAC play. Certainly we have some things we can improve upon and we continue to get better in those areas, with each passing day. I like the progress that we have made and I the players continue to work very hard.

The race for the MAAC title will be as challenging as ever before. Marist was the preseason favorite, but there are a number of teams that should compete for the right to call themselves MAAC champions.