When Iona and St. Peter’s square off Monday night for the MAAC championship in Bridgeport, Conn., it will be a family affair for Rashon Dwight and Wesley Jenkins.

Dwight, a senior guard for Iona, and Jenkins, a senior guard at St. Peter’s (pictured), are cousins who played together under coach Nick Mariniello at Bloomfield (N.J.) Tech High School.

“He texted me and said, ‘We’ll see you in the championship,” Dwight told the New York Post after Iona beat Rider, 83-59, in Sunday’s semifinals. “It’ll be a family feud, good to go against each other. One of us will be going to the NCAA Tournament. May the best man or best team win.” (more…)

St. Peter’s senior guard Wesley Jenkins had an MRI on Thursday that revealed a hyper-extended right knee and a bad bone bruise.

“His ligaments are intact,” said St. Peter’s coach John Dunne, whose team faces Rutgers Thursday at the RAC. “He will most likely  be out for a few weeks.”

Jenkins initially injured his knee in a pickup game Oct. 1 at the Jersey City school. It was eventually diagnosed as a partially torn ACL, but Jenkins returned to the court Nov. 27 against LIU. In seven games, he’s averaging a team-best 11.6 points.

Forward Ryan Bacon is also out approximately two weeks with a foot injury, Dunne said.

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Seton Hall recently lost its best player to injury, while St. Peter’s just got theirs back.

With senior guard Wesley Jenkins back in the fold, the Peacocks (2-3) have a chance for a big win Monday at the Prudential Center against the Pirates (2-3), who are playing without leading scorer Jeremy Hazell, out with a broken wrist.

“I just think at the end of the day we’ve got to play really well to beat them, with or without Hazell,” said St. Peter’s coach John Dunne, a former Seton Hall assistant under Louis Orr.

Eugene Harvey hit a one-handed 28-footer at the buzzer to lift Seton Hall to a 53-51 victory last year. This year’s game will be shown at 7 p.m. on SNY. (more…)

St. Peter’s College senior guard Wesley Jenkins was playing in a pickup game Oct. 1 at the Jersey City school when he first felt discomfort in his right knee.

“I was going up for a layup and came down wrong,” the 6-foot-2, 195-pound Jenkins said in a phone interview. “I  didn’t know it was messed up, so I kept playing.”

Jenkins went to see the trainer the following day and that’s when he received some potentially devastating news from the team doctor, Dr. Tom Wickiewicz of the Hospital for Special Surgery: he had a partial tear of his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

“The first thing that came in my mind was this is supposed to be our year to win and for me to be going down with an ACL injury complicates the whole season,” Jenkins said. (more…)

As I previously reported on my Twitter, Isaiah Williams, a 6-foot-7, 190-pound wing from The Robinson School, has committed to Iona, and 6-8, 203-pound forward Jamir Hanner of Philadelphia has committed to Marshall.

“Williams is a 6-7 guard who scores in bunches, passes extremely well and runs the point,” said his coach, Vincent Robinson. “He makes everyone around him better and can play multiple positions.”

Robinson said Williams turned down offers from DePaul and South Florida of the Big East to attend Iona due to his relationship with assistant coach Jared Grasso. (more…)

There was a flurry of coaching movement Wednesday in the New York area.

St. Peter’s assistant coach John Morton has been offered an assistant coaching position under Tom Pecora at Fordham and is expected to take it.

Morton, a Bronx, N.Y. native, played on the 1989 Seton Hall team that reached the NCAA championship game before losing to Michigan.

He replaces Van Macon, who left Fordham to join Mike Rice’s staff at Rutgers.

Meantime, Kimani Young, the athletic director of the New Heights AAU program, will join the Rice High School staff under new coach Dwayne Mitchell while retaining his position at New Heights. (more…)

ESPN’s Ashley O’Connor attended the Metro Atlantic Conference meetings last summer in hopes of finding a pair of teams to fill a specific time slot for the network’s “24 Hours of College Basketball” event this Tuesday.

The network had Drexel and Niagara lined up for an 8 a.m. game and Clemson and Liberty set for a 10 o’clock tilt. But it needed two teams to fill another slot.

“They didn’t have anybody slated for the 6 a.m game,” St. Peter’s head coach John Dunne said Monday by phone. “When they were talking about it in the meeting, me and Pat Elliott, our AD, were making eye contact.”

After the meeting, Dunne got on the phone to Monmouth coach Dave Calloway to see if he was interested in playing that tilt. The two teams were scheduled to play a regular season game this Wednesday.

“He called me from the meeting and said if we move it to Tuesday we can play on ESPN,” Calloway said. “He said, ‘We have to play at 6 o’clock.’ 

“I said, ‘That’s OK.’”

“He said, ‘a.m.’” Calloway added. (more…)