Men’s basketball aims to make playoffs for first time in the NCAA era

While the men’s basketball team has added some good pieces, the biggest plus from the off-season is that it’s largely the same team. With 10 out of 15 of last year’s players returning, the team will have some of that team chemistry that they found too late last season.

“As coaches, you always have an idea of what you want for guys to fit in, as far as their role on the team. I don’t think we nailed it bang on early [last season],” said head coach Steve Hanson. “We didn’t really hit our stride until mid-January and that’s way too late.”

Last year saw only six players who had played any minutes for SFU return and a change in coaching staff in the off-season. With stability, this team should be able to build on the team’s surge at the end of last season.

Despite going 2–18 in the conference, SFU looked a lot stronger by the end of January, and the two wins at that time undersells just how much more competitive they were than at the beginning of the year. Even though they were still losing more than they were winning, they held lengthy leads in some games, and others just losing by a few points, like in a tough 74–73 loss in February.

This year, the team’s main goal is simple.

“I expect to be a playoff team, no coach has done it in the NCAA era [at SFU], but I just think that has to be the minimum expectation, to be a top six team every year,” Hanson said.

While it might seem like a bit of a stretch to go from last place — with a record that was quite a notch down from the other 10 teams — to the top six, Hanson is not talking pie-in-the-sky.

“We talked about it as a team in January, even though we hadn’t had a win in conference play yet. I said, ‘If we put three or four wins together, we’d be right there. If you look at the number six to 11, it was very tight race,’” he explained. “Western Oregon, Western Washington, Anchorage, I think those are going to be top three this year, and from four to 11, it’s going to be a dogfight, so we expect to be in that fight a lot more than last year.”

And he’s right. While it’s hard to tell whether the play at the end of January will be more indicative of this year’s edition year-round or not, if it is, this team should be in that dogfight, so to speak. Last year, the sixth place team held the same conference record as the seventh- and eighth-placed team, while nine and 10 were just a win behind.

To do that, SFU’s going to have to get big performances from the returners. The three seniors — JJ Pankratz, Iziah Sherman-Newsome, and N’Kosi Kedar Salam (formerly known as Kedar Wright) — will be a big part of that. Pankratz and Salam were forces on offence, while Sherman-Newsome, who was fourth in scoring on the team, led the team in rebounding.

“Iziah, coming from junior college, came in pretty big and strong [last season], but he wants be more of a perimeter-type threat, so he really leaned down — he lost about 10, 12 pounds. He’s in outstanding shape, and he shot the ball really well in our scrimmage this week,” said Hanson. “Kedar did the same thing. He came into camp in great shape, and if you see JJ Pankratz, you see the man. He’s put a lot of size and muscle on his frame, so those three guys are leading us in the weight room, and in all our workouts.”

On the other end of the spectrum, the other two players to really keep an eye on are both entering their second year. Michael Provenzano, who transferred to SFU last season after redshirting at Lake Superior State, and Othniel Spence, a pure freshman in 2016–17, were some of the the most exciting players.

Provenzano had immediately stepped into an important role in offence, putting up a team-leading 362 points while averaging 31.3 minutes per game. With a year under his belt, he’ll be one of the team’s main leaders on offence. Spence, while used a bit more sparingly by the coaching staff, impressed them with his speed, and put up monstrous 24- and 29-point games to close the season. He will likely be relied on more this season.

Joining the returners are six new players to round out the roster at 16. Four are straight from high school, and two are expected to play this season.

From high school, SFU added Vancouver College’s Sam Bailey, Holy Cross’ Keegan Konn, Drew Bryson from Arlington, Washington, and Matthew O’Brien from Clackamas, Oregon.

Bailey will redshirt this season, while Konn had suffered an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL, knee joint) injury at the end of his senior season and is “another two months away from full practice,” according to Hanson. With Bryson, the coaching staff considered him playing this season, but decided on redshirting him with the “two guards ahead of him right now.”

The only one who is likely to see playing time is 6’9” forward O’Brien.

“We’re just going to see how much work he put in since the end of the high school season, and how much strength he could put on with our program over the last four or five months. A week before he moved to SFU, he suffered a pretty serious ankle injury with his trainer back in Portland, so it’s been about nine, ten weeks now since he’s suffered that injury,” explained Hanson. “He’s just been starting to run and get into practice, so he’s not ready, but we’re going to have to take a look at him over the next two to three weeks to see where’s he at, and we’re hoping he can play this year. I mean, he’s already shown that he’s a pretty skilled guy. He can be an impact player in his first year if he’s healthy.”

SFU has also added two players from junior college after National Signing Day.

Jordan Muir-Keung, a 6’1” point guard from Bellevue Community College, will play this season and Hanson expects him to be an impact player.

“We watched him a lot last year. We weren’t sure what kind of offers he was going to get, but he was available after the signing period, and we thought he’d fit in with what we do,” said Hanson. “He shoots the ball quite well, he’s just a smart point guard, and he can play the one or the two — just to alleviate some of the pressure we put on Mike [Provenzano] last year. He played a ton of minutes, and I think moving Othniel to his natural spot which is more of the two will be really good for us.”

EJ Christie, the other, really stands out because of his big 7’0”, 270-pound frame. He represents the kind of size that SFU just didn’t have last season. However, the transfer from LA Southwest will not play this season, as he is a partial qualifier, meaning he is only eligible for practice. Still, Hanson expects him to have an impact on this year’s squad.

“He changes everything we do in practice and just having an NBA-sized body in practice, it’s been really good for our big guys to compete against a guy like that,” he explained.

The team will also be without Graham Miller, likely for the season, as he suffered a ruptured ACL.

“It’s extremely frustrating because of all the work he put in the off-season, but Graham is an outstanding guy. He’s been real positive through the whole process and hasn’t missed a workout or anything we’ve done,” Hanson said. “That certainly hurts our depth up front because at the power forward position, he was playing well . . . sometimes he had to play a little bit of centre and he actually played quite well when he was thrown in [that] position, so it hurts our depth up front, but we’ve got some guys who can step up.”

Tyrell Lewin will play at centre with Aleks Vranjes backing him up.

SFU will kick off the season with a home exhibition game against Okanagan College on Sunday, November 5 before starting Division II non-conference play the following weekend. Conference play begins November 30 at home against one of the conference’s top dogs, Western Oregon.

“For us, November is a huge month . . . [It] gives you a good idea of what you have and where you’re going to compete, because you’re playing some mid-level teams, some high level teams, and you want to see what kind of stamp you’re going to have with this group,” said Hanson. “The next month will tell us a lot about where we’re at.”

Sunday’s game will begin at 1 p.m. at the West Gym.