ALVA, Okla. – We're less than a week away from the start of the 2018-19 NCAA basketball season as the Rangers will be looking to build on a breakout 2017-18 campaign that produced a 22-7 record and the school's first NCAA post-season victory. Northwestern finished the 2017 regular season in second place behind only #13 Southern Nazarene (24-2) and are planning on picking up right where they left off.
"These guys are motivated to a pretty high degree" said head coach Shawn Dirden, now entering his third season leading the program.
Northwestern returns two key starters from last year and will be led by GAC Newcomer of the Year Treyvon Andres and point guard A.J. Jones, and will be looking to its youth to step in a fill the roles of its five graduating seniors.
Dirden has been encouraged by the way his players have treated pre-season workouts and is happy to see more vocal leadership out of Andres and Jones.
"I expect big things from those guys. Their focus has been there, and they're motivated to help lead this team to where it needs to go" said Dirden.
John Godwin, Hayden Graham and Elijah Parks are a trio of red-shirt sophomores that have played under Dirden for three seasons now, and he believes that all of their hard work and dedication is about to pay off.
"All three of those kids have been with me here since I took over. What I've seen from them last spring and into this fall is tremendous growth" said Dirden. "They really have an understanding of what it takes to compete at this level."
On a new-look roster with 11 fresh faces, Dirden is confident that his staff has brought in the right players to make the transition seamless.
"We've done a great job recruiting and I think we've put some important pieces around those two returning players to have an opportunity to compete at a high level again in the GAC. We lost a lot in those five seniors, but we really feel like we have a core group of guys that are primed to step up and have no problems taking over those roles."
One of those new faces to the roster this season is Eric Andres, Treyvon's older brother who sat out last season but is poised for a breakout year after practicing with the team throughout 2017-18. Referencing their high school coaches and from what he's seen in practice and scrimmages, Dirden says "there's a little bit of magic that happens when they're on the floor together."
Alongside the Andres brothers will be newcomers Bryce Cashman, a 6'11" division one transfer from the University of North Dakota, Joseph Moorer, a 6'1" guard coming from West Georgia University, and David Thornton, a forward out of Northeastern Oklahoma A&M.
Northwestern opens regular season play Friday, Nov. 9 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma at the MIAA/GAC Challenge. The red-and-black will start the year with non-conference games against the University of Central Oklahoma and Northeastern State University for the fifth straight year.
"We know both those teams well and we know we've got our work cut out for us. It'll be good to see such strong opponents early in the season, so we've got to go out there and learn how to win on the road" added Dirden.
"We've put a lot of work into practice and defensive drills all off-season so I know the guys are excited to head down to Northeastern. Now we've just got to go out there and own it."
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