When the Buffalo State men’s basketball team opens its season against D’Youville next Tuesday, you’ll notice that several key components from last season are still in place for this year’s campaign.
For head coach Fajri Ansari and the rest of the defending SUNYAC Champion Bengals, that’s a good thing.
Ansari is returning for his seventh season behind the Bengals’ bench. Last year, he guided the team to a 23-7 record, the SUNYAC Championship and a run to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament. The 23 wins were the most the program has had since 1991-92.
This year’s team features little roster turnover from last year. The Bengals lost two starters in forward Glenroy Carr and guard Chris Cartwright, but Ansari said he believes the team is tooled to overcome those losses.
“Yeah, we’ve lost two starters, but we still have the core of our team coming back,” Ansari said.
That core consists of juniors Justin Mitchell and Jake Simmons. Mitchell, a forward, earned second team all-SUNYAC honors last season and was named MVP of the SUNYAC Championships. He averaged 14.4 points and eight rebounds per game, while being among the league leaders with 49 blocked shots.
Simmons, a guard, led the Bengals and all of the SUNYAC in scoring last season, averaging 19.5 points per game. He became just the 19th player in school history to amass over 1,000 points, doing it in just two seasons, tallying 1,007. Simmons was also named Sporting News Preseason Second Team All-American.
According to Ansari, both players add an element of leadership to the team.
“They’re demonstrating more leadership in terms of their work ethic and that’s going to be really helpful to our new players coming in,” Ansari said. “They have good statistics and get individual attention, but they haven’t allowed that to impact their work ethic. Their work ethic is really good and they’re very committed to this upcoming season.”
Simmons said he leads through hard work and the experience he gained over the past two years gives him a bigger voice in the locker room.
“We had guys last year that led with their experience,” he said, “but now I’ve gained experience so I’m speaking up more and helping my teammates more.”
The team has two starting seniors this season in guard Norman Simmons, who is Jake’s cousin, and forward Ahmed Nagaya. Despite a drop-off in scoring last season, Norman Simmons had career-highs with 102 assists and 46 steals. Nagaya played a key role coming off the bench last year.
“We’ve got a lot of freshmen this year so Ahmed and Norman are really speaking up out there,” Mitchell said of the seniors.
As for the final starter, Ansari said nothing is locked in.
“We have three or four guys that can go in that spot right now,” Ansari said. “It could possibly be sophomore Nico McLean. He’s a big guard, we played three guards last year and we’re trying to do pretty much the same.”
The Bengals run an up-tempo offense with a fast-break transition game. Ansari said that they also play a defensive game that requires a high level of intensity from its players. While he believes his team has a long way to go in conditioning, having depth will certainly assist in maintaining their pace.
“What helps us is that we have enough talent to hopefully have some depth in that regard,” Ansari said. “The challenge early on is to get new players to understand what we’re doing and be able to get them in there. Then we can spell some of our starters in the rotation and maintain our speed.”
Because they have returning starters running a system similar to the one they ran last season, heightened expectations accompany the Bengals this year. They were ranked 19th in the D3hoops.com preseason national poll.
“We pay attention to the rankings, but we use it as motivation,” Mitchell said. “It lets us know that we have to work harder because we’re only working to get to that number one spot. We don’t want to settle for 19th and lollygag through practices. We want to get to number one.”
Jake Simmons’ expectations for the season are even higher than those from D3Hoops.com.
“We expect nothing less than the national championship this year,” he said.
Tuesday’s game against D’Youville starts at 8 p.m. in the Sports Arena.
Tom Gallagher can be reached by email at gallagher.record@live.com.