Name-a-Day Calendar, July 25: Siena Saints
Page 261 of 365
Chosen in: 1989
Chosen by: A committee of students, alumni, and faculty headed by sports information director John D’Argenio
St. Bernardine of Siena College was founded by the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) in 19371 and began playing men’s basketball the next year. This team’s first nickname came in November 1940, when student newspaper The Siena News2 and the school athletic association held a contest to select a nickname and the winner was “Mohawks”, after a local Native American tribe.3
By the end of that very season, “Mohawks” had been abandoned for the more general “Indians”, and this new nickname stuck with Siena for almost a half-century. Beginning in the 1970s, Native American tribes in the Northeast began more loudly voicing their opposition to their nicknames and imagery being caricatured to represent majority-white institutions. Syracuse University retired their longtime Saltine Warrior mascot in 1978 and St. John’s University retired their Native American mascot a few years later. In fall 1988, Siena gave in to mounting pressure and cut the “Indians” nickname.
The ensuing men’s basketball season was all kinds of wacky for Siena. I’ll start with an analogy philosophy professor Raymond Boisvert gave for dropping the “Indians” nickname:
“Imagine … instead of the Siena Indians, we are called the Siena Italians. At basketball games, the loudest cheering comes from … the Cosa Nostra Rowdies, some of whom come dressed as Chicago-era mafiosa. Down on the floor, leading the cheers and circling the gym is an Al Capone type.”
Imagine. What actually happened was that Siena pledged to play the season with no nickname as a committee of students, alumni, and faculty—headed by sports information director John D’Argenio—took the semester to weigh their options.
Then, in February 1989, as the Siena No-Names were playing good basketball and D’Argenio’s committee was working its way out of the identity crisis, the entire campus got shut down by a measles epidemic. A student contracted the virus on a trip to Puerto Rico, brought it back to Upstate New York, and accidentally spread it to several of their classmates. It only got worse from there, and as a result, Siena was forced to cancel two games and play the final nine games of their season with no fans in attendance, which—let me tell ya—was real topical when I first researched this story in 2020.
It’s a shame nobody was able to see how the season played out because, again, Siena’s team was great. They came out the other side of the epidemic as North Atlantic Conference4 champions, winning the conference championship game on a last-second tip-in. They carried a 24-4 record into the program’s first NCAA Tournament, where they’d be a 14-seed matched up with 3-seed Stanford.
Just before that game on March 16, 1989, D’Argenio’s committee came to their conclusion and unveiled Siena’s new nickname: they’d be the Siena Saints. Snappy, alliterative, and fitting given the school’s Franciscan background.
Then the Saints came marching into Greensboro Coliseum as an 8.5-point underdog and upset Stanford 80-78. Siena’s first game as the Saints was their first NCAA Tournament game and their first NCAA Tournament victory.5 Needless to say, the nickname stuck.6
There are many ways a school could choose to visualize the “Saints” moniker, but Siena almost certainly chose the cutest. Since 1994, their mascot has been a Saint Bernard terrier. First came a costumed mascot named Bernie “Saint” Bernard. Most recently, in 2022, a live terrier followed. Meet Baloo.
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Shortened name to Siena College in 1968
This paper has gone through several rebrands and is now The Promethean.
Freshman Anthony Feeney submitted the winning entry and was awarded a men’s basketball season ticket.
This conference is now known as the America East.
It was also the first ever NCAA Tournament loss for Stanford. At the time, their most recent Tournament appearance was in the 1942 edition, which they won.
Siena would bow out in the Round of 32 to 11-seed Minnesota, 80-67. Ski-U-Mah!