Return to Daemen was step in the right direction for Hamburg's Ben Bill

Around the local basketball community, people figured Benjamin Bill wouldn’t be back at Daemen this year.. Bill was the reigning East Coast Conference player of the year. In the NIL era of college sports, with the money flowing, surely some Division I school would lure away a marvelously skilled 6-10 center.

Head coach Mike MacDonald understood the realities. Last March 19, three days after the Wildcats lost to Aquinas in the DII regionals, MacDonald took his team out for chicken wings. He told them he understood the realities of modern basketball. If anyone wanted to jump to another program, he would help them.

MacDonald said Daemen could be a top five team in the country. They’d play an exhibition at KeyBank Center, travel to Florida for a major tournament. He talked about his own journey as a coach, how he had systematically advanced from one rung of the profession to the other, learning at every step.

“So much of this has always been a gradual, step-by-step process,” he told the team, “and you don’t skip a step. You can still grow, still be a part of something special. Then I left. I paid the bill and I left and let them talk.” Later that night, ‘Coach Mac’ got a call from one of his guys. His talk had resonated with the group. Everyone would be coming back in 2025-26. That included Ben Bill.

Daemen has enjoyed another great year, as MacDonald had promised. They played an exhibition at KeyBank, won twice in Florida, also won in West Virginia and California, rolled through the ECC season. They’re 28-1, the repeat regular-season champions. They’re currently ranked fourth in the country in Division II, and will again host the conference tournament this weekend.

“That core group here, we’re all where we want to be, and where we want to go,” Bill said after practice Tuesday. “Last year, I felt a little bit like there was unfinished business. I had to come back and make the long run this year.”

Unfortunately, Bill wasn’t there for much of the run this season. On Dec. 12, in a game at Mercy, he was kicked in the leg while attempting to block a shot. MacDonald thought it was an ankle at first. It was a lot worse. Bill suffered a hairline fracture of his right tibia. He missed the next seven weeks, 11 games in all.

Bill, a redshirt junior, was averaging 19 points and 10 rebounds when he went down. He returned on Jan. 31. MacDonald eased him back into the lineup, giving him 17 minutes a game and moving up to 26 in the regular-season finale. He said Bill is doing well, though he isn’t nearly as explosive as he was early in the season, when he was, in his coach's words, “dominant, the best player in the league by far.” MacDonald said Bill still has the fear of re-injuring the leg. He’s hoping to get his center’s playing time back up in the 30-minute range for the conference tournament. It’s even more vital that Bill be back on his game a week later, when the Wildcats again host the East Regional at Lumsden Gymnasium.

“I’m feeling much better,” said Bill, a Hamburg High graduate. “I’m strengthening, running more, just getting back into it. I’m still feeling it a little bit. But it’s getting better. I’m getting my jumping back, strengthening the muscles and things like that.”

Bill didn’t appreciate having to sit and watch for seven weeks. Daemen went 10-1 in his absence. Backup center Phil Nwugwo played admirably as the starter, averaging 13 points a game. But Bill seemed chagrined to have missed the Wildcats’ only loss, a 79-61 setback at 10th-ranked Gannon on Jan. 21.

“It’s the worst,” Bill said. “It’s like high school. I broke my foot and it’s similar to that. Being out, I hate it. I want to play. I want to be in the game. I want to be in those big games, big situations. Seeing my team lose that one game sucked. I want to play as much as possible. The thrill of being in those big games is something I live for. That’s what I came back for, to win here.”

Daemen doesn’t lose often (the women as well). They’re 56-2 over the last two seasons, 81-11 over the last three. They’re 260-85 in MacDonald’s 12 seasons at the school on Main Street. He’s had a lot of terrific players and doesn’t need to take a chance on projects. Bill was a good player at Hamburg, but not considered one of the top 25 players in Western New York after his senior season in high school.

Bill said he wasn’t recruited by any Division I or II teams. About five Division III schools showed interest. He initially committed to Alfred. MacDonald asked several people about Bill, including his own assistants and people at Hamburg, and they said not to recruit him. Bill was a good kid, but a tad unmotivated.

But in the summer of 2022, Bill played in a summer league with two of Daemen’s finest ex-players, Andrew Sischo and Gerald Beverly. After seeing Bill play, they told him he was better than DIII and should look at Daemen. Bill called Matt Hartman, then a Daemen assistant, and asked if MacDonald would recruit him. MacDonald had an opening and said Bill could call him.

“He called and I said, ‘Ben, the first thing you have to do is call the Alfred coach and tell him you’re opening your recruiting’,” MacDonald said. “If you do that, call me back and I’ll meet with you and your parents. And he did that. We bring him in and I say, ‘Ben, we didn’t recruit you. I had a lot of people who told me not to recruit you’, He goes, ‘Coach, I wouldn’t have recruited me, either’. I thought that was incredibly self-aware for a 17-year-old kid.”

Bill went to Daemen and played sparingly as a freshman. After the season, he asked MacDonald if he could redshirt a year. “I said, ‘Ben, you’re right, if this program is about development, it’s a good idea. So it might hurt us, but we’ll do that. We’ll redshirt you.” It turned out to be a great idea. As a redshirt sophomore in 2024-25, Bill turned into a star. He was a Division II third-team all-American, the player of the year in his league. You can bet he had options. Look around some of the Division I programs and ask if he could be the starting center.

Bill laughed when told there were hoop followers in town who assumed he would go somewhere else for money.

“I love Daemen, I really do,” he said. “It’s great, being home and being able to have my family come to the games, and just winning. I just love it here. I feel like everybody on this team is super unselfish, and has so much love for each other. You don’t really find another team in college basketball like it.

“It’s really a great thing to see.”

Pics courtesy of Mary-Margaret Johnson/Daemen Athletics