After up-and-down seasons last year, the men’s and women’s basketball teams are prepped and ready to rebound as they look to the start of their schedules.
Coming off a year in which the men’s team began 7-0 in Patriot League play but faltered down the stretch of the season, eventually losing to Lehigh University in the opening round of the postseason, the Maroon and White are looking for more consistency this season.
“We felt like we let a couple drop down the stretch that could have really impacted our chances to play for a conference tournament championship,” men’s head coach Mike McGarvey said. “We have a chance to compete again for a championship and go to March Madness, which is what we all want.”
The men’s team went 11-21 overall last season, including a 10-8 record against Patriot League opponents, good for third place in the conference.
Despite last season’s record, the Leopards only ranked sixth in this year’s Patriot League Men’s Basketball Preseason Poll.
“We try not to talk about preseason polls or rankings,” McGarvey said. “I think we got a little bit carried away with being in first place for a large stretch of January last season and thinking about the future a little bit too much.”
Focused on the present, the team looks to improve day by day, looking at playing with more pace.
“We’re playing faster, so we’re playing a different style, especially offensively, we want to get out in transition,” senior center Justin Vander Baan said. “Defensively, we want to press up more, make teams more uncomfortable.”
McGarvey reiterated the idea of playing up-tempo and as a group, focusing on generating high-quality shots through ball movement.
“We have a really high assist rate on our made field goals, so spacing the floor with intention to drive and kick and share and take what the defense gives us is the top priority,” McGarvey said.
The men’s season tips off on the road Monday at 8 p.m. against Villanova University.
On the women’s side, the team enters the season with a similar mentality, looking to bounce back from a tumultuous season and focus on playing with more pace.
Finishing with a 5-13 Patriot League record and a last-place finish in the conference, the team lost key contributors in graduating seniors Makayla Andrews and Kayla Drummond, last season’s team leaders in points and rebounds, respectively.
“We’re definitely going to be a team, a true essence of a team, which is everyone’s contributing,” head coach Kia Damon said. “We have the ability this year to potentially go 10, even 10-plus deep, so I think it’s going to be more of a sum of our parts.”
While the Maroon and White were ranked ninth in the Patriot League Women’s Basketball Preseason Poll, the team carries a similar attitude as the men’s team, looking to string together wins and play with pace.
“Because we’re small, we gotta be scrappy and we gotta just totally disrupt the other team’s offense,” senior guard Abby Antognoli said. “There’s no way that we could play in transition if we don’t get stops and get defensive boards, so our main identity is going to have to be getting stops and pushing the ball in transition.”
In addition to playing fast in terms of switching from defense to offense, the team looks to get into action quicker in the half-court setting.
“We’ve been really working to pick up our half-court pace,” Damon said. “We want to play at a good tempo there and we also have multiple kids who can handle the ball, multiple kids who can be decision-makers for us, so we want to be more aggressive.”
The women begin their season on the road at Boston College on Monday at 5 p.m.
“It’s my hope, and it’s always been my wish, to have at least four to five players who can score in double figures,” Damon said. “I think this team, this season, will give us probably our best chance that we’ve had at having that.”
