ROLLA, Mo. – After a season in which it posted its highest finish in the Great Lakes Valley Conference since joining the league in 2005, Missouri S&T's men's basketball team will crank up its 2014-15 campaign Saturday night when it plays host to Missouri Baptist at Billy Key Court.
The Miners finished ninth in the overall GLVC standings in the 16-team conference and in a tie for fourth in the West Division, but the loss of its top four scorers from a squad that averaged 88.6 points per game a year ago – the fifth-best mark in NCAA Division II -- has led to a retooling of the roster that will be unveiled against a Missouri Baptist squad that already has three games under its belt.
S&T's top three scorers from the 2013-14 campaign – all-region performer
Bryce Foster (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central),
Mudiaga Eruteya (Chicago, Ill./Notre Dame) and
Nusrath Khan (Morton Grove, Ill./Maine East) – combined to average 51.4 points a game in S&T's high-scoring attack last winter.
Head coach
Jim Glash is hoping that he has found the adequate replacements for that trio heading into the upcoming year, as the Miners return just five players from that squad that ended up 12-15 overall and 7-11 in conference play. Glash, however, feels that this year's version of the roster is a much deeper one than last season's.
Leading the group of newcomers are four transfers from the junior college level who are expected to compete for starting roles, in wings
Marcus Walden (Augusta, Ga./Academy of Richmond Co.) and
B.J. McLaughlin (Florissant, Mo./Hazelwood Central) and forwards
Clement Bonardo (LaFarlede, France/Costebelle) and
Desmond Buerge (Carthage, Mo./Carthage).
Walden, who played at Northwest Kansas Technical College, averaged 8.7 points a game and shot over 50 percent from the field in both of his seasons at the junior college level, while McLaughlin averaged just under five points and four rebounds a game for a talented Moberly Area Community College squad last winter. McLaughlin played his first season at Tennessee-Martin and started nine games for the Skyhawks that year.
Bonardo was the highest-scoring player of the group last season as he averaged 14.2 points per contest and shot 45 percent from three-point range at Murray State College in Oklahoma. The Miners are also hoping for solid contributions from transfer Buerge, who played last season at Cameron University after a year at SMSU-West Plains, as well as freshmen Ervin Sarajilic (19 points and seven rebounds per game at St. Louis' Oakville High School) and
Juwan Miller (Kitchener, Ont./Huron Heights), a point guard from the Toronto suburbs.
Zach Ellis heads up the returning group for S&T as he is coming off a sophomore season where he averaged nearly eight points a game, while
Danylo Zuikov (Kiev, Ukraine/LaLumiere School) was one of the top three-point shooters in the GLVC at 41 percent and connected 55 times from long range in his first season at S&T. Senior
Curtis Okafor (Kansas City, Mo./Bishop Miege) and junior
Michael Nesbitt (Evansville, Ind./LaLumiere School) also return after finishing the last campaign with scoring averages of better than five points a contest.
Missouri Baptist dropped to 1-2 Wednesday after losing 108-74 at home to Culver-Stockton, its second loss to the Wildcats in a five-day span. Adrian Kuyinu leads the Spartans in scoring with an average of 16.7 points a game after leading the way with 15 points Wednesday, while Chris Buzzell is scoring 15.3 a game and Stephen Buckner 13.7 a contest.
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