SUNY Orange adds former national player of the year Romeo Aquino to staff

SUNY Orange added former Colt standout Romeo Aquino to its men’s basketball staff for the 2026-27 season, bringing back the 2022 national player of the year as an assistant coach under Tom Rickard. The move, announced Aug. 5, gives the Colts a staff addition built on one of the program’s most decorated playing résumés.

Aquino grew up in Washingtonville, graduated from Washingtonville High School and played his college basketball in Middletown with the Colts. In 2022-23, he appeared in all 33 games and started all 33, logging 28.0 minutes per game while shooting 57.7 percent from the field, 24.6 percent from 3-point range and 76.4 percent at the foul line. Those numbers came during one of the defining seasons in SUNY Orange history, when the Colts finished 31-3 overall, went 28-0 in the regular season and reached the 2023 NJCAA Division II Final Four.

That resume gives Aquino immediate weight in the areas that matter most to a junior-college staff. He knows the level of consistency required to stay in the lineup every night, he has already delivered on a championship-caliber roster, and he returns with a direct line to the standards that shaped SUNY Orange’s best recent team. For recruits, that matters because the coach in the room has done the work in the same jersey they hope to wear. For players already in the program, it matters because Aquino can speak from experience about what a Final Four run requires in practice, in scouting and in late-game possession basketball.

The hire also deepens a staff that already includes Rickard, who was named BCANY Coach of the Year on June 25, and assistant Kevin Stein. SUNY Orange’s coaching structure now pairs Rickard’s recent recognition with Aquino’s on-court legacy, while keeping the program closely tied to the group that delivered the Colts’ 2022-23 banner season. SUNY Orange raised that 2023 Final Four banner on Jan. 13, 2024, a public reminder of how high the program climbed with Aquino in the rotation.

For the Colts, Aquino’s return is more than a nostalgic reunion. It reconnects the program with a player who helped define its modern standard and gives Rickard another voice who can carry that standard into the next recruiting cycle. In a crowded NJCAA landscape, that kind of continuity can be the difference between remembering a banner and building the next one.