City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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A new era of Saint Joseph’s men’s basketball got underway unofficially on Saturday afternoon, as the new-look Hawks and first-year head coach Steve Donahue made their public debut in an exhibition game against Delaware. 

With Donahue substituting liberally all game long, utilizing every member of his 15-man roster, the Hawks used a strong second-half stretch to pull away for an 86-65 win. Here’s a notebook full of notes, quotes, stats and observations from Hagan Arena:

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Rotation watch

It didn’t take long to see the entire 2025-26 St. Joe’s roster.

To open the game, Donahue rolled out a starting five of sophomore guard and La Salle transfer Deuce Jones II, senior guard Derek Simpson, redshirt sophomore wing Dasear Haskins, junior forward Anthony Finkley and sophomore forward/Fordham transfer Jaden Smith. 

He pulled a complete line change after the first media timeout a little more than five minutes in, putting in the group of redshirt freshman guard Khaafiq Myers, sophomore guard/St. John’s transfer Jaiden Glover-Toscano, freshman wing Austin Williford, redshirt freshman forward Kevin Kearney and graduate student forward Justice Ajogbor. 

Four minutes after that came another line change: Jones and Simpson returned along with redshirt freshman center Steven Solano, redshirt sophomore forward/Marquette transfer Al Amadou and sophomore guard Mekai Johnson, ensuring the entire group of scholarship players was on the court within the game’s first nine minutes. 

Aside from Solano and Johnson, who got about five minutes of run, everybody else got at least 9-10 minutes of action. Simpson led the way with 26 minutes, Jones (23) and Haskins (21) the only others to play more than half the contest. Donahue substituted five-in, five-out quite a few more times throughout the game, creating all sorts of roster combinations and permutations throughout the exhibition. 

Simpson and Jones II, two of the team’s three true guards along with Myers, are guaranteed to see big minutes. After that, it’s up for grabs. 

“Right now, guys are fighting for minutes and roles, and I thought I’m going to try to give these guys even opportunities,” Donahue said. “At the same time, you want to play well and figure out how to win, but the first goal is to give everyone a chance. I think three through 12, we have a lot of guys who can jump from 12th man to 7th man, and vice-versa.”

Glover-Toscano, a 6-6 wing, led the way for the Hawks with 19 points (7-11 FG, 2-5 3PT), throwing down one of the Hawks’ multiple emphatic dunks while also blocking three shots. Williford added 10 points and seven rebounds off the bench, including a smooth pair of catch-and-shoot triples. 

“I thought Austin Williford is just a really good basketball player, his bad days are not very bad, his good days can be great, but right now he’s Mr. Consistent,” Donahue said. “Dasear played well, Deuce did the stuff he can do on defense that he’s been doing, I thought Derek had a good second half.”

The 2024-25 A-10 Rookie of the Year at La Salle, Jones scored 16 points with five assists, four rebounds and three steals to lead the Hawks’ starters. Simpson added nine points, four rebounds and four assists; Haskins added nine points with four rebounds and four assists with two blocks. Finkley rounded out the double-figure scorers with 13 points and three rebounds. 

As a team, the Hawks were 30-of-61 from the floor and 11-of-37 (29.7%) from the 3-point arc, and won the rebounding battle 40-36. They also racked up 24 assists against 14 turnovers; Delaware had 11 of each.

“I want layups and I want catch-and-shoot 3s,” Donahue said. “I actually thought we took half a dozen or 10 3’s that we shouldn’t have taken, I thought we could have played through the actions and when we did down that end, we scored.

“If we can get assisted layups, then we’re really playing great basketball. I think the biggest change we had to make over last year here is we only got 13 shots [per game] at the rim. We want to get 20, and we have players who can do that.”

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Myers back after long layoff

He didn’t score, only played 11 minutes and had more turnovers (three) than assists and steals combined. But it was great to see Myers back out on the Hagan Arena court after the Neumann-Goretti product had to sit out nearly two years due to injury.

“It felt great, definitely a (few) jitters but it felt great to be back, couldn’t be more thankful just to get back out here playing,” he told CoBL afterwards.

Myers hadn’t played anything resembling a meaningful game in front of a crowd since early January of his senior year of high school, 22 months prior. A right knee injury he’d been managing for some time finally gave way; when his recovery from surgery didn’t go perfectly, he found out he wouldn’t be able to return at all for his first year of college. 

So he spent last year on the bench, learning from last year’s starting backcourt of Xzayvier Brown and Erik Reynolds II about what it takes to be a successful Division I guard. He got back into practices this summer, saying it took him most of the offseason to feel like himself again.

The biggest adjustment, the 5-9 point guard said, was “just the physicality and knowing when to shoot and making the right reads at the right time. In high school, it’s always the first read; in college, it’s always the second or third.”

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Bliss picks up where he left off

The last time Christian Bliss was in Hagan Arena was his last competitive in-season game.  

The Delaware redshirt freshman was a senior at the George School when a timeout was called with one second left in overtime of the PAISAA state championship game, allowing Perkiomen School to break the tie and win it at the line in heartbreaking fashion. 

Bliss shook off that bad memory in his return to Hawk Hill and the loss of his freshman season to an injury and looked like his old self, scoring 24 points in 35 minutes to lead Delaware in his first public collegiate action.

“I wouldn’t even say it’s emotional, it’s exciting,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming, a long time just getting out there playing in front of my family and I’m just blessed to be able to play, when you get injured you take it for granted, so I’m just blessed to be able to play now.”

A New York City native, Bliss played at the George School from 2022-24; he had been a member of the Class of 2025 but took enough classes to graduate in 2024 and enrolled at Virginia. But a broken ankle in the preseason cost him the whole year; with the coach that had recruited him, Tony Bennett, retiring unexpectedly before that season, he hit the portal after the year and ended up at Delaware to play his redshirt freshman season. 

The physical 6-3 combo guard picked up right where he left off with George, scoring from all three levels on an efficient 8-of-16 from the floor (1-2 3PT, 7-8 FT). He also grabbed four rebounds and had two assists and two steals as well as two turnovers while playing both on and off the ball. 

“I think he’s a guy that’s very cerebral, will get guys involved, but knows he can go get a bucket when he needs to,” Ingelsby said. “He’s a unique point guard because he can post, he’s comfortable getting down hill, he’s a strong guy that can initiate some contact. Pretty efficient night for him, I think he’s going to be a big part of what we do this year.”

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Delaware down bad (Blue Hens edition)

The Delaware bench had more Blue Hens in street clothes than in uniform, Martin Ingelsby’s squad bitten quite frequently by the injury bug the last few weeks. Senior guards Cavan Reilly and Justyn Fernandez, sophomore wing Lance Piper, grad forward Nnanna Njoku, senior forward Bouna Kebe and others were all unavailable on Saturday afternoon. 

Ingelsby said the majority of the injuries were of the “day-to-day or week-to-week” variety, with the exception of Piper, who had ankle surgery late in the summer and is likely out until 2026. Considering he’s missing at least two if not three starters and a couple valuable rotation members in that group, there’s no doubt team health is the top thing on Ingelsby’s mind with the season quickly approaching.

“We’ve got to get these guys healthy over the next nine days before we open against Bucknell,” he said. 

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Up Next

St. Joe’s begins its season on Mon., Nov. 3 with a home game against Lafayette, 7:00 PM at Hagan Arena. 

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