Greg Paulus took his team home in 2025–26 — and got a front-row seat to how far Niagara still has to climb. On November 21, the Purple Eagles walked into Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first meeting with Duke in program history, part of Duke’s “Brotherhood Run” for teams coached by former Blue Devils. Paulus, the three-year starter and two-time Duke captain who played under Mike Krzyzewski from 2005 to 2009, faced his former backcourt mate Jon Scheyer. The result was a 100–42 rout — Duke shot 58 percent, hit 17 threes, and never let Niagara breathe — but the moment meant something anyway: a mid-major program on college basketball’s biggest stage, led by a coach who belongs there.
The rest of the season told a harder story. Niagara finished 8–22 overall and 5–15 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Paulus’ seventh season on Monteagle Ridge ending well below the standard he set early in his tenure. The Purple Eagles did sweep the Battle of the Bridge season series against rival Canisius — the rivalry that defines western New York basketball — and they shot the ball well enough to rank second in the MAAC in field goal percentage at 44.1 percent. But 22 losses are 22 losses, and the program’s trajectory has tilted downward since its early-2020s peak.
That peak was real. Paulus became the 23rd head coach in program history on November 7, 2019 — promoted from associate head coach when Patrick Beilein resigned days before the season without coaching a game — and he immediately steadied the ship. His teams became the first Niagara squads to earn back-to-back first-round byes in the MAAC Championship since 2008–09, reaching the conference semifinals in 2021 — the program’s first in eight seasons — and again in 2023. Through that stretch he was 86–120 overall, with eight NCAA Tournament appearances on his résumé as a player and coach.
Paulus the player was as good as his résumé says. A three-year starter and two-time captain at Duke, he won three ACC championships, posted a 112–28 record, and still ranks in the program’s top ten in assists (468), three-pointers (210) and three-point percentage (.398). He appeared in four NCAA Tournaments as a player, then coached in four more as an assistant at stops including Ohio State, Louisville, Navy and George Washington. He understands March basketball from the inside — the preparation, the pressure, the standard — and he’s spent his Niagara tenure trying to build a program that can live up to it.
Niagara basketball’s history has genuine weight. The program dates to 1905, and its golden age ran through the late 1960s and early 1970s under Frank Layden and Hubie Brown — yes, that Hubie Brown, the future NBA coach and broadcaster, who coached the Purple Eagles from 1972 to 1976. The 1970 team, led by All-American Calvin Murphy — one of the greatest small-college scorers ever, a 5-foot-9 guard who averaged over 33 points a game — reached the Sweet 16, beating Penn before falling to Villanova. Murphy remains the program’s towering figure, a Basketball Hall of Famer whose number hangs in the rafters.
The Joe Mihalich era (1998–2013) brought the modern tournament appearances: the 2005 team earned a bid and drew Oklahoma in the first round, and the 2007 team won the MAAC tournament, beat Florida A&M in the opening round, and then ran into a buzzsaw — top-seeded Kansas, 107–67. Three NCAA appearances in program history, two wins, and a Sweet 16 banner from 1970. That’s the foundation.
The Gallagher Center is the home: a 2,400-seat bandbox on the Niagara campus in Lewiston, New York, that’s intimate, loud and unmistakably old-school. When the Purple Eagles are good, it’s one of the toughest small gyms in the MAAC — the kind of building where the students are on top of the floor and the road team hears every word of it. Paulus’ best teams defended home court fiercely.
The Battle of the Bridge is the rivalry that matters most. Niagara and Canisius — separated by a bridge over the Niagara River gorge — have been playing since 1907, and the series is the lifeblood of western New York college basketball. The 2025–26 sweep kept the Purple Eagles’ recent edge in the rivalry alive even in a down year, and it’s the result the fan base will remember longest from an otherwise forgettable season.
The MAAC is a league built for a program like Niagara: compact, competitive, and winnable in a weekend. Iona has owned the modern era, but the conference tournament is famously chaotic, and a hot three days in Atlantic City can erase a .500 season. Paulus has been there — the 2021 and 2023 semifinal runs proved it — and the 2026–27 season, his eighth, is about getting back to that level: defend the Gallagher Center, shoot it like the 2025–26 team did, and find the toughness that turns close losses into March wins.
Paulus knows what the top of the mountain looks like — he played on it, coached toward it, and stood on the Cameron Indoor floor across from it in November. The job now is building a Niagara team that can climb toward it. The Purple Eagles have been there before, in 1970 and in flashes since. The next climb starts now.