With months of rigorous practices and endless thought of game strategy, all that a sports team can really hope for in an upcoming season is a more successful one than the last in terms of records and results. Despite the loss to Stetson University in their first preseason game, UT’s men’s basketball team has high hopes to improve as the days wind down for the regular season to begin. In order to achieve success, the team is setting higher standards for themselves and working harder than ever to finish stronger than years before.
“As a coach, the goal is to get to the national championship,” head coach Richard Schmidt said. “Right now, we need to focus on winning the league first. We are setting high goals for this season because the league is very good, and we need to improve along with it.”
To do this, the coaches are relying on every player to do their jobs, whether they are returning from last year or are new to the program. Schmidt is looking specifically toward junior Jordan Davis to bring success this season. Davis is a transfer student from the College of Central Florida who is bound to make an impact for the Spartans.
“Jordan is going to be a difference-maker on this team,” Schmidt said. “He is quick on the floor, and he is the best passer that we have. He is really the key to the whole team.”
As for the other new players, Schmidt is expecting improvement above anything. Freshman Matt Johnson is Davis’ backup and a walk-on this year.
“We will have to see what he has to offer this year,” Schmidt said. “He learns fast and has improved tremendously already this season.”
Aside from skill and athleticism, however, there is another key ingredient necessary to winning games that has often been overlooked by this team in years past: positive energy. It is an aspect that can make or break a team and, until this year, has not remained at the forefront of the players’ minds when it should have been. Instead, the team has based their energy on what they saw on the scoreboard.
“Everyone has the same goal this year and really cares about winning,” senior guard Eric Moraes said. “In the past, we’ve started undefeated for the first 10 games of the season and got overconfident. I think it is important to remain grounded and positive through wins and losses.”
A notable change in the roster between last year’s season and the present one is going to need all of the positive energy it can get. With the loss of two prominent players in Anthony Griffis and Stefon Barfield, it seems as though the team is going to have to compensate with everything they have.
“Anthony was a big loss for us because we needed him as a shooter, and Stefon would have been a starter,” Schmidt said. “We lost two extremely instrumental players, and are looking to Eric Moraes, Ryan Kidd and Austin Rettig to continue to improve their game in order to pick up the slack for those players.”
In the previous two seasons, the team has finished eighth and ninth, respectively, in the Sunshine State Conference. While players and coaches will always have their eyes set on a national championship, Moraes stresses the importance of creating more realistic and attainable goals.
“I would personally like to see this team just improve in the conference,” Moraes, a graphic design major, said. “We’re always ranked last in the pre-season poll, and I think that we should focus on trying to do better in that aspect this year.”
Tess Sheets can be reached at tess.sheets@yahoo.com.