I'm at the Times Union Center, it's 14 minutes before the tip-off between the Rider and Siena women, there are about 20 people in the stands, and I have some time to kill. So I'm emptying my digital recorder and dumping some Rider quotes on to the blog.

We'll start with Siena coach Fran McCaffery on the Broncs.

Ryan Thompson, McCaffery said, "is oen of the best players in our league. I know Novar Gadson has been an impact freshman. I think Justin Robinson is playing extremely well. Mike Ringgold has stepped up and been more active with the departure of Jason. It's a team that I think has a lot of weapons."

Those weapons will be tested tonight against the Saints, who to the surprise of no one, are unbeaten in the MAAC.

But as noted in today's advance, the Broncs are confident that they have a chance -- something that wouldn't have been the case two weeks ago. Why?

"Yes, because Harris is back," Dempsey said, "but also because we’ve been getting better in practice. The young kids have been getting better."

After giving up runs against La Salle, Binghamton and Drexel that proved impossible to overcome, the Broncs have been much better on defense in their past two games, holding Iona and Marist to an average of 55 points per game.

That thought prvoked a bit of an eye-opener from Mike Ringgold.

"If we play defense, we should win the championship," Ringgold said. "We’ve got the talent to do it on the offensive end, and I definitely see the improvement. We’re just making progress in every game.�"

Did Dempsey agree with that assertion?

"I think we’ll be a contender if we take care of the defensive end," he said. "That’s where our focus is. We score the ball pretty well but we’re not going to score it as easily as we did last year, so we need to make sure teams aren’t scoring it as easily as us. We’ve really made a commitment to defense. I thought it showed up at Iona, I thought it showed up for 20 minutes (against Marist) and we have to continue to focus on that. Guys have to understand the importance of it. We have to defend to contend. That’s basically the way we look at it right now."

...

Late in the second half against Marist, Ringgold threw down a dunk while being fouled by Ryan Schneider.

Dempsey said he'd like to see more of Rider's younger players -- Novar Gadson comes to mind -- play with what he called Ringgold's "I'm going to dunk on you" mentality.

"I think our young kids need to develop because they’re such good athletes and they’re good off the dribble, so they have an advantage where they can drive it by post players," he said. "And when they drive it by they have to attack the rim a little bit better. That’s something that we talk about but the reality is you’ve got to have that edge mentally�." �