ALBANY—Last summer, the entire Canisius women’s basketball team stayed on campus. They worked out in the Koessler Center, six days a week. They lifted weights together. They had one thing in mind, one motivating objective: to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament.

That meant, of course, that Marist—the three-time defending league champion— was never far from their thoughts, either.

“I was always saying, ‘You’re doing this so we can beat Marist,’ ” said Brittane Russell, the Golden Griffins’ junior point guard.

Marist is a mid-major colossus, the women’s version of Gonzaga. During Brian Giorgis’ seven-year run as coach, it has averaged 24 wins a season. Two years ago, the Red Foxes made a stunning run to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament before losing to Tennessee.

Terry Zeh has raised the Canisius program to new heights in his five years as coach. The problem is, Giorgis keeps raising the bar. Marist makes everyone better. You have to be, or you’ll be left in the dust. The Griffs won 24 games this season, a school record for Division I. They won at Marist in the regular season.

But the MAAC tourney is a different matter. On Sunday afternoon, Canisius had its long-anticipated showdown with Marist in the championship game. And it was the Red Foxes who rose up to their impossibly high standard, wearing down the game but outclassed Griffs, 78-63, to capture the title and their fifth NCAA berth in six years.

It is no disgrace, losing to Marist. The amazing thing, in retrospect, is that the Griffs actually beat them at HSBC Arena for the title in 2005, becoming the first and only Western New York women’s team to make the NCAAs. That ’05 title came in Zeh’s first season as the Griffs’ coach.

Ever since then, he’s been chasing the Red Foxes, who are a staggering 79-5 in MAAC play during the last four years, including 12 consecutive wins in the conference tournament.

“It’s great to be always nipping at their heels and trying to be better than them,” said senior Amanda Cavo. “We always circle them on our schedule.”

Still, it would be nice to actually beat them in March. Cavo has played four productive seasons at Canisius, leading her team despite chronic tendinitis in her lower legs. But every year, it’s Marist that walked away with the big trophy. Giorgis is 168-53 in seven years at Marist, a 4,000-student college in Poughkeepsie.

Before that, he was 451-44 in 19 years at Our Lady of Lourdes High in Poughkeepsie, winning nine state titles. You’d think some major program would snatch Giorgis away. But he’s 53, a local icon. He’s signed through 2014 and he’s not going anywhere.

“Coach is loved in the community,” said junior Rachele Fitz, the MAAC Player of the Year. “He’s a star in Poughtown. We love him and appreciate what he’s done for us. But yeah, I can understand why other programs might want him.”

You have to wonder if Zeh sometimes wishes a major program would steal his nemesis away from the MAAC.

“He is like Gonzaga,” Zeh said. “Why take a job at a lower-level Big East school where you get 400 people to your games and you’ve got to go play UConn? They had 3,200 fans when we were there.”

“Our conference is obsessed with beating us,” Giorgis said. “And you know something? I don’t blame them. I’d be obsessed, too.”