Manhattan Basketball: Steve Masiello fired, Jose Perez enters transfer portal

Manhattan Basketball before the start of the season fired HC Steve Masiello followed by star guard Jose Perez leaving the team.

The MAAC took a big hit less than two weeks before the season begins as reports are surfacing that Preseason Player of the Year Jose Perez has entered the transfer portal as a result of the firing of Manhattan Basketball head coach Steve Masiello.

The news of Perez transferring isn’t surprising after hearing the Masiello news, but the head coaching change itself is shocking, seeing how close it is to the start of the season.

Perez averaged 18.9 PPG last season with the Jaspers and was named to the All-MAAC First Team. Manhattan is the third stop for the 6’5” wing, as he played his first two seasons at Gardner-Webb before transferring to Marquette his junior season. After barely seeing the floor in Milwaukee, he headed east to Manhattan where he broke out last year.

With an extra year of eligibility due to COVID 19, Perez decided to exercise it and return for 2022-23. A big part of that decision was his relationship with Coach Masiello.

Perez took to Twitter after hearing the news, saying “This has been a very tough day for me and honestly speaking coach was the most caring person I ever met he cared so much for his players and honestly speaking it would (be) very difficult for me to put on a jasper’s uniform again if coach ain’t on those sidelines. Love you coach!”

He likely won’t be alone, as Perez retweeted multiple tweets saying that multiple teammates will follow him. Including Perez, there are 10 graduate student and fifth-year players on the Jaspers’ roster.

The reason for the firing of Coach Masiello isn’t exactly clear, but Marianne Reilly, the director of athletics at Manhattan College, said in a press release “we determined that it was the right time to begin rebuilding from the top down.”

Masiello was the head coach of the Jaspers since the 2011-12 season and had a 147-162 record in 11 seasons at the helm. Last year, he led the team to a 15-15 record, tied for seventh in the MAAC.

The interim head coach for this season is going to be RaShawn Stores. Stores played at Manhattan for four seasons from 2012-16 and stayed with the program since then in a variety of roles.

“”We are committed to a strong basketball program and excited that RaShawn — a proven team leader – will be leading our veteran team into what promises to be an exciting season,” Reilly said in the same press release.

As for Perez, it’s just another bump in the road in what has been an up-and-down collegiate career. He will likely be highly coveted in the transfer portal, but teams may not want to bite seeing how close it is to the start of the season and a lot of coaches already have their rotations set.

More importantly, Perez is losing somebody whom he considers to be a father figure to him in Masiello.