ROLLA, Mo. – A new season – and a different looking one at that – will get underway for Missouri S&T's men's basketball team right after Thanksgiving as the Miners will play a pair of road games in Great Lakes Valley Conference play over the holiday weekend.

The day following Thanksgiving, the Miners will take on Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo., then head back to St. Louis on Sunday for a 3:15 p.m. tilt against Maryville.  The Miners are opening the season with a conference game for the first time ever, due to the GLVC going to a conference-only slate for this season as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.  Missouri S&T has 22 games on its 2020-21 schedule.

Bill Walker enters his second season as the head coach and has a squad with a number of new faces on it.  However, the Miners do return on of their three double figure scorers from a year ago Mitch Fairless (St. Charles, MO/Duchesne), who averaged 11.6 points per game and was the only Miner to shoot better than 50 percent from the field as he ended the year at 51.5 percent.

Fairless is joined by the Miners' top rebounder from last season in Chima Oduocha (Hoffman Estates, IL/Conant), who pulled down six per game in his first season in a Miner uniform, as well as juniors Dawson Berry (Centralia, IL/Centralia), Nathan Elmer (Nixa, MO/Nixa) and Kyle Bushman (Mount Vernon, MO/Mount Vernon) – although the Miners will be without Elmer at the start of the season as he is recovering from a pre-season injury.

Walker has added a talented freshman class as well as a pair of transfers to the mix that could have an immediate impact.  The transfers are Kevin Legardy (Las Vegas, NV/Canyon Springs), who came to S&T from Mineral Area College where he was a double figure scorer on a 30-win team last year and Mahamadou Kaba-Camera (Conakry, Guinea/Balboa City (San Diego, CA)), a native of Guinea in west Africa who came to the United States as a teenager.  He stands seven feet tall and joins the Miner roster after spending three seasons at Cal State Northridge and should give the Miners an additional inside presence along with Oduocha.

The freshman class includes Julien Smith (Fort Worth, TX/Northwest), a Texas native who scored over 2,000 points in his high school career; Kaden Froebe (Lincoln, IL/Lincoln), an all-state guard from Lincoln, Ill., who figures to see much of his time at the point guard position; Micah Johnson (Ankeny, IA/Centennial), another player on the front line who was also an all-state selection in the state of Iowa a year ago; and DJ Pitia (Kansas City, MO/Staley), a forward who comes to S&T from Staley High School in Kansas City.

ABOUT LINDENWOOD: The Lions, in their second season under the direction of Kyle Gerdeman, finished the 2019-20 season with marks of 12-16 overall and 6-14 in their inaugural GLVC campaign; they finished the year with wins in three of their final four games and went 9-6 in Hyland Arena.
 
Lindenwood returns its top two scorers from a season ago in TJ Crockett, who finished second in the GLVC in scoring with an average of 21.3 points per game and Vijay Blackmon, who scored 16.6 points per contest to also rank among the top 10 in the conference.  Cameron Scales, a 38.6 percent shooter from three-point range who averaged just over 10 points a game last season, also returns for the Lions.


The Lions also added some offensive punch to their squad with the addition of Brandon Trimble, a transfer from former GLVC member Wisconsin-Parkside who averaged 13.3 points a game last season for the Rangers.  Trimble hit 36 three-point baskets and shot 36.4 percent from beyond the arc.

Lindenwood held off the Miners 78-73 in the only meeting between the teams last season that was played in St. Charles.

ABOUT MARYVILLE: The Saints will be playing their first contest under the direction of new head coach Jesse Shaw, who came from cross-town Missouri-St. Louis to head a team that finished 5-22 last year and won just once in in 20 conference games.

Shaw inherits a team that returns only four players from that squad with the top returning scorer being sophomore Owen Long, who averaged 10.6 points per contest last season.  Long also connected on a team-high 46 three-point baskets and shot 38.7 percent from three-point range, but as a team, the Saints ranked last in the conference in scoring and near the bottom in most statistical categories.

Of the seven new players on the roster, the Saints are seeking contributions from transfers Daniel Farris, a two-year starter at Central Missouri who averaged 5.7 points per game last year; Jaelon Hood, a double-figure scorer last winter at Malcolm X College in Chicago; JT Morgan, a standout high school player at Detroit Jesuit High School; and redshirt freshman Ari Jackson, who hit 69 three-pointers as a high school senior at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis.

S&T won both matchups over the Saints last season by double figure margins, taking a 72-59 decision in Rolla early in the year and the return match by a count of 72-61 in St. Louis in mid-January.