The Sooner Athletic Conference has produced the NAIA men's basketball national champion the last two years.
Ty Harrelson would love if the SAC could make it three in a row, and he'd love it even more if the Wayland Baptist Pioneers were the team to do it.
"Personally, I think the Sooner Athletic Conference is the best conference in the nation," Harrelson said of the league which this season grows to a dozen teams, five of which are ranked or receiving votes in the NAIA Top 25.
Understanding that, winning a conference championship – much less a national title – will be no easy task, especially for a Pioneers program that's picked to finish fifth in a conference in which it's never won a regular-season crown, although Wayland did earn a pair of conference tournament titles in 2015 and 2016.
WBU starts its 2017-18 campaign tonight in Espanola, N.M., where the Pioneers open against Northern New Mexico in the first game of the Ohkay Owingeh Classic. WBU and NNM go at it at 8 p.m. CDT, before the Pioneers take on the University of the Southwest (N.M.) at 6 p.m. Friday. NNM and USW then face off Saturday evening.
"Our guys are ready to play. Practice has been good, but they are tired of beating up on each other. It will be good to play the first game and face good competition," said Harrelson, about to start his third season at the helm of the Pioneers, having gone 21-12 two years ago – including a conference tournament title and trip to the national tournament – and 18-13 last season.
Wayland is up against a Northern New Mexico team that, after winning just six games last season, opened its 2017-18 campaign Saturday with a 91-86 home victory over a West Texas A&M team that advanced to the NCAA Division II Sweet 16 last year and which this season is ranked No. 21.
"We are prepared to play," Harrelson said. "Because it's the first game, there's a little bit of the unexpected. But we have a solid core group of players back from last year's team, and we'll be looking forward to see how we integrate the new players we've added."
The five veterans include four who played substantial minutes in seniors
Tyrone Davis and
Ruben Lopez, junior
Josh Throns and sophomore
J.J. Culver. Throns, the team's top 3-point threat a year ago, averaged 11 points a game, while Culver, a 6-foot-4 playmaker, got 9.1 points and 3.6 rebounds. Lopez was good for 7.6 ppg and almost three assists a contest, while the 6-foot-5 Davis added 3.4 ppg. Sophomore
Chris Doerue, who started last year on the junior varsity, also returns.
The roster features nine new players: three transfers and six freshmen. Among that group, five are 6-foot-7 or taller, giving Wayland one of its deepest, big-man rosters in some time.
"I feel like we've added a little bit of depth at our forward positions," Harrelson said. "If somebody has to come out, we have some height that we can replace them with."
The tallest of the group is 6-9 freshman
Abdi Ghedi of Edina, Minn. Junior
Rokas Mazionis, a Lithuanian transfer from Weatherford College, is 6-8 while standing 6-7 are senior
Marko Zelic of Serbia by way of Lamar State College-Port Arthur, and freshmen
Cade Marriot and
James Roundtree, both of Arlington.
"A lot of those are young, so we look forward to seeing how they do against other competition," Harrelson said.
Another forward/center, 6-7 senior
Samuel Kalwanyi of Uganda who transferred last year, begins the season on the injured list.
Rounding out the freshmen are guards
Tre Fillmore of Amarillo,
Aaron Dove of Lubbock and
Dominic Cervantez of Salt Lake City, Utah. Another promising guard is 6-2
Trevonta Robertson of New Orleans, a transfer from Collin College in McKinney.
"Rokas and Trevonta look like they'll come in and play some good minutes," Harrelson said. "We feel like we have a deep team. The guys play hard and play well together."
After this week's games, Wayland next plays the first of its two NCAA Division I opponents, Rice, in an exhibition Nov. 4 in Houston. The other D-I opponent, Texas-Rio Grande Valley, shows up on the schedule Jan. 30 in Edinburg.
The Pioneers will play Tarleton State, a recent NCAA Division II Final Four team, in a Dec. 19 exhibition contest in Stephenville and face Our Lady of the Lake, a formidable NAIA program, twice, including the home-opener Nov. 13.
"It's not an easy schedule," Harrelson said. "We tried to get our non-conference games to get our guys ready for conference."
As for the SAC, "I feel confident that we will be highly-competitive in the conference."
The coach said the Pioneers plan to employ "pretty much the same" philosophy as they have the past two seasons.
"We'll get after it on defense and try to speed up the tempo, and on offense push it in transition, move the ball around and attack the basket, and shoot 3s. That's who we are and what we do," Harrelson said. "Pioneer basketball is about making reads and knowing our opponent. We will prepare for each game.
"It'll come down to if we can go out and execute."
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