2006-2007 Men’s Basketball Preview

BILLINGS, MT – If ever a season could be tagged as a rebuilding year, it’s the 2006-2007 season for the Montana State University-Billings men’s basketball team.  The Yellowjackets will return just one player who started more than 10 games last year, and the returnees in ’06-’07 had only a combined 16 starts among them last season.  But, many Yellowjacket fans probably remember head coach Craig Carse’s first rebuilding job at MSU Billings in 1995-1996.  That group of unknown players went 20-8, beat Oregon State, and went to the NCAA Tournament.

For anyone who would challenge the notion that this will be a rebuilding year, consider that of the Yellowjackets’ 92.9 ppg scoring average last season (second in the nation), 85.0 of those points will not be back this year.  Graduated is Cameron Munoz, the top 3-point shooter in NCAA Division II history and the No. 2 scorer in Yellowjacket history.  Graduated is Moritz Wohlers, a first-team all-conference big man who averaged 19.4 points and 8.0 rebounds a game.  Graduated is Buddy Windy Boy, the stalwart captain and leader who also finished tenth in school history for points scored and third for 3-pointers made.

In addition to the losses to graduation, the Yellowjackets took an off season hit when juniors Carlin Hughes and Lucas Walker transferred to Division I St. Mary’s (CA).  The pair, crowd favorites at Alterowitz since they arrived as freshmen, combined for about 29 points a game last year.  Hughes ranked near the top of NCAA Division II for assists.

Carse, entering his twelfth season at the helm, has posted 10 winning seasons in 11 years.  The school record books are filled with Carse’s players, names all Yellowjacket fans know: Carse, Cook, Davison, Edwards, Gliko, Hallgrimson, Hamilton, Hassell, Montague, Munoz, Phillips, Skrifvars, Stevens, Stirmlinger, Thompson, Warmsley, Washington, and Windy Boy.  With that kind of track record, the question becomes, who’s next?  Who will be the next 3-point gunslinger?  Who will be the next fan favorite at Alterowitz? 

“We know we had a 92.9 ppg average last year and that about eight points per game return,” says Carse.  “So losing five full time starters, we lost a lot of our scoring and rebounding.  In that, we lost two first team all-conference guys, a second team all-conference guy, and an honorable mention all-conference guy.  So we lost a lot of experience.  We have nine new players in the program on a 13-man roster.  We do not have a returning full time starter, yet we have three people that have had some quality starts in their careers: Jonathan Wiley, Cody Samuelson, and Drew Arnold.  So we have three guys with some experience.”

The four returning players will have to mesh with a crop of newcomers that have a variety of backgrounds.  Some have transferred from junior colleges, some have transferred from four-year schools, and some are freshmen right out of high school.  Despite the fact that there were some big shoes to fill in the recruiting process, and the fact that it may take awhile to learn how well those shoes are being filled, Carse likes the group of players he has.

“This group has been hand picked to fit our style and system.  I’m not going to put us in the category of the top programs in the country that just reload year after year.  I do think that we’re in a rebuilding year, and that going into the Great Northwest Athletic Conference next year, this will be a wonderful year to let these guys go back to the basics of our system. 

“We’re going to do the basics that we’ve always done here.  We’ll be a little more defensive oriented early because we won’t know who our scorers will be.  We don’t want to make guys become shooters until they know how to shoot.  We will try to become more conscious of rebounding, which we’ve never been really quality in.  It will be fun to watch guys grow.”

Joining Samuelson, Wiley and Arnold as returning players is 6-10 sophomore Carl Johnson.  The new faces and names Yellowjacket crowds will need to learn are juniors Ammar Harknell, Russell Steplight, Derek Taylor and Tom D’Amore; sophomores Eric Cunningham and Colby Sedlar; and freshmen Jeff Miner, Mike Barton and Troy Ruff.  That’s a lot of change, but Carse says that Yellowjacket Basketball will still be Yellowjacket Basketball.

“Our style and system of play will change very little in the aspect of philosophy.  If you look at the first game we ever played here, when we had guys like Reece Gliko, Mark Hamilton, Brent Montague, Jamie Stevens, Matt Pruesser, Eddie Cochran, those kids were brand new to the system.  They were older and had some experience, but those guys picked it up.  I think this team will be similar to that one in terms of learning the system.

“As far as what people will see on the court, they will see us keep things simple.  We’ll use basic entries, basic defenses.  They’ll still see the up-tempo and controlling of tempo as far as transition.  They’ll still see us shoot the ball, although they’ll see a little more emphasis on going to the interior.  We do have a 6-10 junior in Drew Arnold who has done wonderful in his preparation.  He just needs game experience.  We have a couple quality interior players in Cody Samuelson and Ammar Harknell who also need game experience.”

As Carse pointed out, this will be the Yellowjackets’ final year in the Heartland Conference.  Beginning with the 2007-2008 season they will renew old rivalries in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference.  The Jackets will get a taste of GNAC competition this year with four non-conference games.

“Next year we’ll be joining the GNAC, so we’ll be starting our season with two games against GNAC competition,” says Carse.  “We’ll play Central Washington, who some have picked to be one of the top teams in the West Region.  That will be our first game of the year at the Northwest Nazarene tournament.  The following evening we’ll play Northwest Nazarene.  We’ve had a nice series in the past with them.  It should be a good opportunity for our young team to see what they have to compete against next season.”

The Yellowjackets early season schedule involves a fair amount of travel as they don’t play at home until December 16.  They’ll face two challenging trips before opening the home schedule with an afternoon game against high-powered West Liberty State, the top scoring team in NCAA Division II last season.

“After the NNU tournament, we’ll come home for a day then fly to Texas to play Texas A&M-International and St. Mary’s,” says Carse.  “Texas A&M-International is a provisional member of the Heartland Conference who we have never played.  St. Mary’s is, year in and year out, one of the top teams in the Heartland Conference.  Our kids are going to have opportunities to play four quality opponents in our first four games.

“We will open the home schedule on December 16 against West Liberty State.  They are in the powerful West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.  They return a group of seniors that have started there since they were sophomores.  They led the nation in scoring last year (98.1 ppg) and won 20 games.  In the last 11 years we’ve been the overall leading scoring team in the nation and we did finish second last year.  We’ll get to play a team that led the nation in scoring last year and has everybody back versus our system because we will have no full time returning starters.  That will be a wonderful first game for our fans.  Then we’ll play two more games against Northwest Nazarene here before Christmas.”

The two home games against Northwest Nazarene on December 20 and 21 will end the non-conference portion of the Jackets’ schedule, at least figuratively if not technically.  Their remaining 20 games will be against teams from the Heartland Conference, although not all 20 will count as conference games.  Two games each against provisional members Texas A&M-International and University of Texas-Pemian Basin will count as games against NAIA opponents.  Five other games against Heartland opponents will be non-conference games that still count toward the NCAA minimum 22 games against in-region teams.

MSU Billings and St. Edward’s shared the Heartland Conference regular season title last year with 9-3 conference records.  The Hilltoppers used a dramatic come from behind win in the championship game of the conference playoffs to earn the Heartland’s automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament.  Carse believes that the Heartland race is wide open this year.

“I think first you have to look at teams that have experienced players returning, then you look at teams that have styles and systems that have been successful in the past.  The first team that comes to mind is St. Mary’s.  They are successful every year and return three quality guards and a quality forward.  I think because of the success of their program and their system, and the longevity of the staff there, St. Mary’s will be good again this year. 

“I look at programs like St. Edward’s to be good again.  They did lose the Heartland Conference player of the year, but I think they have a program going, and they have some experience with NCAA Regional play last year.  They should be a team to reckon with.”

Last year’s regular season race in the Heartland turned into a two-team affair between MSU Billings and St. Edward’s by midway through the conference season.  Oklahoma Panhandle and Western New Mexico each came on strong at the end to qualify for the conference playoffs with Western knocking of St. Mary’s in a conference play-in game. Western New Mexico has left the conference for the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.  The bottom two teams last year, Incarnate Word and Lincoln, were each 8-19 overall and a combined 3-21 in the league.  Carse says those teams can’t be counted out at the beginning of this season, creating an exciting race to the conference playoffs.

“With Incarnate Word, you have a new coach coming into a program with everybody returning.  They had a tough year for a lot of reasons last year, but they definitely could sneak in and surprise some people.  They definitely had the athletes to play basketball last year.  Oklahoma Panhandle is kind of like us.  They’re rebuilding, but they had a couple good finishes in the league the last couple years.  Lincoln is kind of the dark horse that a lot of people might not look at.  They have a nucleus of guys back that the coach really likes.  They had some things that were tough for them last year, but they played well late in the year.  I look for them to be competitive. 

“I think the Heartland will be a competitive league.  With us, we’ll have to rely on our system of play and having news guys fit that.  We have a better understanding of the travel and the play in the Heartland (than we did last year), so I think on a given night we’ll be competitive with anybody.  I think it’s a toss up league this year.”

Among Yellowjacket fans this year there are likely to be plenty of “glass half full/glass half empty” conversations.  That’s the nature of sports and sports fans.  But Carse and his charges aren’t spending time worrying about what might have been.  To them, 2006-2007 will be an opportunity to build a foundation on which to continue the tradition of Yellowjacket Basketball.

“In hindsight I probably would have done a schedule where we had a few more home games early versus starting out on the road,” Carse says.  “But as everybody knows we lost two quality returning starters that would have been potential captains in Carlin Hughes and Lucas Walker who have signed with Division I schools.  It was going to be a rebuilding year in some aspect no matter how you look at it (with the loss of Munoz, Windy Boy, and Wohlers).  It’s one of those years that comes along that we’ll work through.  It’ll be fun because the expectations won’t be quite as high, and we can see how much better we can get.

“It will be fun as coaches to get to introduce new players to a style and system that has had some production for a long time.  We hope these guys will fit in, and going into the GNAC next year we hope this group will have the system down and we’ll be able to go into that with an experienced veteran group.”