Giorgis readies Marist for run at eighth straight title

With March comes March Madness, and one local team will be gunning for its eighth consecutive trip to the Big Dance when the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament gets under way later this week in Springfield, Massachusetts.  WAMC's Ian Pickus has more.

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Credit Marist College athletics

Brian Giorgis leads the Marist women's basketball team

When Marist College’s athletics department hired Brian Giorgis away from powerhouse Poughkeepsie high school Our Lady of Lourdes to coach its women’s basketball team in 2002, it knew it was getting a driven and professional winner whose teams excelled on the high school level. But his run of success in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference ever since — a truly stunning level of dominance for a mid-major — has made Poughkeepsie a part of the national basketball conversation every March. The Red Foxes have won seven straight league titles, eight overall, and five NCAA Tournament games under Giorgis — and Marist has turned away strong intra-conference challenges during that extended reign from continually frustrated programs like Iona.