Merrimack Men’s Basketball Earns Two Huge MAAC Wins, Will Face Siena on ESPNU Friday

Jack Lawhorne — Student Reporter

North Andover, MA — The Merrimack men’s basketball team picked up two massive victories in the past four days over two of the premier teams in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

Last year in the Warriors’ debut campaign in the MAAC, the standings looked like this at the end of the regular season: Quinnipiac, Merrimack, Marist.

And while Saint Peter’s and Siena have made big splashes this year and jumped into the mix, the three top teams from last season still remain in the top five in 2026.

And over the past four days, first-place Merrimack defeated both Quinnipiac and Marist to extend their win streak to a league-best six in a row and take a two-game advantage ahead of second-place Saint Peter’s.

It all started Thursday night at Lawler Arena. The Warriors got off to a sloppy start, going down double digits to Marist in the first ten minutes of the game, but bounced back to win the first period of play and outscore the Red Foxes by 20 in the second half en route to a dominant 81–56 home victory.

The Warriors took such firm control of the game that they were able to get their reserves in at the end, which the crowd absolutely loved. While the core six (the five starters and Ugwuakazi) each logged 24 minutes or more, Brendan Johnson, Aliou Cisse, Dylan Veillette, Brandon Legris, and Jaylen Stinson all got in for a handful of their own. Veillette sees the court regularly, but he didn’t early in this game — and the other four often don’t hear their names called for games upon end.

The highlight of the night came when Legris, Cisse, and Johnson combined for a block on the defensive end, and the ball made its way to Stinson who found Veillette with a nifty pass for a layup to go up 24.

“It felt good,” said the team’s leading scorer, freshman Kevair Kennedy, who scored a game-high 22 points. “We told ourselves before the game that we were gonna get them in.”

“And those guys are so important,” added Head Coach Joe Gallo. “We have a scout team, we have blue vs. gold every day, they’re competing every day, those guys bring the same energy every day whether they’re playing or not, we haven’t had one guy go sour on us — so it’s really important for those guys to get in, and for the crowd to cheer for them the way they did.”

“Jaylen [Stinson], a guy that’s been a part of a lot of championship teams, he’s a big part of this, he’s the guy in the summertime teaching these guys [Dorset, Kennedy, Shelton] how to play the zone. So for him to get in and be able to see the ball go in, and hear the crowd — it was great for him.”

“The crowd definitely put a battery in our back,” added Kennedy. “They get so hyped, you can’t lose in front of them. You can’t let them down. We play with that chip on our shoulder for them.”

“If you’re still having this much fun in February, then you’re doing something right,” concluded Gallo.

On Sunday afternoon, the Warriors officially made it six in a row when they defeated Quinnipiac 56–49 in a hard-fought, low-scoring affair.

The Warriors were dominated on the rebounding front 46–23 and 22–3 on the offensive glass, but made up for it by forcing 16 turnovers and holding the Bobcats to an abysmal shooting day — 28% from the field, and 1–16 from three-point range (6%).

Reigning MAAC Player of the Year Amarri Monroe was held to just 10 points (3–14 FG), while Kevair Kennedy, the front-runner to win the award in 2026, scored 24.

The Warriors are back in action Friday (2/20) evening at 7:00 p.m. ET when they’ll host the Siena Saints for the second matchup between the two teams this season. Last time the two squads played in early January, Merrimack escaped in the final seconds by a score of 63–59.

The contest will be nationally televised on ESPNU.

“We are grateful to ESPN and the MAAC for selecting our men’s basketball game to be broadcast on prime time television, and we look forward to showing off Merrimack College, our basketball program and our incredible fans to a national audience next Friday night,” Merrimack athletic director Joe Foley wrote in a statement.