Optimystik Kinard has St. John Fisher in prime position heading into February. St. John Fisher athletics photo

While it might take St. John Fisher College a couple of days to emerge from the next big snowstorm, its men’s basketball team has had no problem emerging as the elite team in the Empire 8 conference this year.

The Cardinals are 15-2, 8-0 in the E8, and have won 13 games in a row. They haven’t just been beating teams, they’ve been dominating them. SJFC’s average margin of victory during the 13-game winning streak has been over 20 points per game.

That more than makes up for the medium strength of opponents, in and out of conference, during the stretch. SJFC has only played four teams with winning records (as of Jan. 27), none of whom have more than 10 wins and only two of which have been conference opponents — Alfred (10-6, 4-4) and Hartwick (9-8, 4-4).

This year’s exemplary season — so far — is a far cry from SJFC’s past four seasons overall. The Cardinals won a total of 15 games in 2010-11 and only 10 games in 2011-12. In the 2012-13 season they went 17-9, 10-4, tied for second in the conference. Last season, they were 16-9, 9-5 and finished tied for second again.

Head coach Rob Kornaker, who has been in the position since the 2001-02 season, thinks this year’s success is due to potential coming to fruition.

“We are finally reaping the benefits of having some older players in our program,” Kornaker, who was reached by phone last Friday, said. “We finally have reaped the benefits of those guys playing a lot of games, being together for a while, and the seniors are really leading us.”

The senior class, accounting for 46 percent of the team’s total points per game, is led by 6-6 guard-forward Optimystik Kinard, who has been the epitome of versatility for the Cardinals and has provided the balance they need.

“There’s some games where I might need to score 20 [points], like we had earlier in the year, to get us a win,” Kinard said. “But some games I don’t even need to score at all. It’s just taking it for each game, how it’s going, feeling out the game.”

That type of game understanding has allowed Kinard (who is called “Opti” by his teammates as if he’s a Transformer) to excel at any position, including the games he’s played point guard or guarded the opponents big man, Kornaker said.

Kornaker echoed Kinard’s importance to the team and specifically to this year’s success.

“[Optimystik] has really been the one who’s kind of transformed us,” Kornaker said. “He’s always been a good player. He’s always had these flashes. … Now he’s doing it on a daily basis, night-in and night-out. He’s defending. He’s passing. … It’s his consistency [that has evolved greatly].”

On the lower end of the class totem pole — but certainly not in terms of skill seniority — there’s sophomore Keegan Ryan. The 6-7 sophomore is averaging team highs in points (16.2) and rebounds (9.6), and had a four-game stretch from Dec. 17 to Jan. 2 in which he averaged 15 points and 14 rebounds per game. 

Ryan is the steady production force for the Cardinals and has been since he came to St. John Fisher.

“We put a lot of pressure on Keegan as a freshman last year when he came in. He started every game for us, and that hasn’t happened a lot around here. … Now, again, he’s been a double-double machine. He rebounds the ball. You can’t guard him one-on-one, so people have to constantly double him. He’s another element to his game this year where he’s passing the ball out of the double-team.

“We’ve kind of got a unique situation here.”

The situation not only amounts to a balance of youth and experience, but also one in which the players understand their roles as being free but integrated parts in a interdependent system.

“There isn’t really a set role,” Ryan said about his own game and the team system. “I mean, we have a lot of freedom to just play. Usually, it’s just see what the defense is doing and react to it, and expose any weaknesses that we see or any mismatches that are available.”

SJFC plays and speaks with a calm confidence that comes not from fervent belief in the system and the way but rather from apprehension and comfort, especially of and with one another.

“I would say this year’s team is overall much more comfortable with each other. This year, more than last year, we’re seeing players step in and really embrace their roles.”

As beneficial as camaraderie and cohesion are, a 15-2 record requires a little more and even more than proficient scoring and rebounding. SJFC’s success this year has been due, in large part, to their defensive success. The Cardinals are holding teams to 60.6 points per game and, more importantly, holding their opponents to 39 percent shooting from the field and 30 percent from 3-point range.

“We knew we were going to be pretty good coming into the year. … What we really talked about was becoming better defensively,” Kornaker said. “I always thought we were talented offensively. We lost a game last year where we scored 80 points. We lost another game where we scored 95 points. So we just thought we needed to be better defensively.”

They also have been studying UVa and Xavier’s pack line defenses, and it was easy to tell that Ryan and Kinard, in an era where flashy and look-at-me attitudes are cool, find more worth in the signal not the noise. They are more impressed with the smart kids, who don’t say much but play as loudly as an industrial machine cranking out W’s.

Northeast-East players of the week, last week

The Northeast-East region had three players on the D3hoops.com men’s and women’s teams of the week. Sam Longwell, the senior guard from WPI; Steve Simonds, junior guard from St. Joseph's (Maine); and Molly Maclachlan, freshman guard from SUNYIT were all named to the honor roll as a result of some dynamite performances.

Longwell, playing for the No. 6 team in the D3hoops.com men’s poll, had an exemplary game against the Wheaton (Mass.) Lyons last Saturday, with a triple-double — 24 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists — in a 92-68 win over their New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference foe.

St. Joseph’s (Maine) Simonds averaged 30.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, 5.7 assists and 1.7 steals in three conference games last week. The Monks beat Mount Ida and Norwich, but lost to Albertus Magnus, the conference leader and ninth-ranked team in the D3hoops.com men’s poll.

The frosh, Maclachlan, had a nice week for the SUNYIT Wildcats. She averaged 25.3 points, seven rebounds and three steals over a three-game winning streak against conference opponents. She capped the week off with a stellar performance against Penn College in which she had 30 points, six rebounds and five steals. The Wildcats are 9-6 overall and 7-1 in the North Eastern Athletic Conference as well as 6-1 in their last seven games.