Ryan ChartrandHeading into last season, the Cal Poly men’s basketball team was filled with hope and promise. After a lackluster regular season and a humbling first-round exit in the Big West Conference Tournament, the Mustangs were forced to go back to the drawing board.
Eight months later, many of the players still feel the sting.
“We have a bad taste in our mouth from last year,” Mustangs senior power forward John Manley said. “We weren’t happy.”
Cal Poly head coach Kevin Bromley wasn’t, either. But a different diagram from past years, one that will rely heavily on team speed and guard play, now has Bromley thinking the Mustangs can compete for a Big West championship.
“Guard play is the key, because guards can control the tempo,” he said. “They can push it, they can slow it up. They can break you down on penetration.”
Bromley was quick to note that with offseason improvements made by senior point guards Trae Clark and Chaz Thomas, and the emergence of shooting guard Lorenzo Keeler as a primary scoring threat, Cal Poly has the backcourt necessary to compete in the conference.
“I think we have really good guard play,” Bromley said. “I see that with my two seniors. I think Lorenzo has really improved his game over the summer. It’s like having three really good quarterbacks. With good guard play, I think you’re always in the hunt.”
Clark and Keeler both averaged a team-high 10.3 points per game last year for the Mustangs, who finished 12-18 overall and 7-9 in the Big West.
The guards aren’t the only ones expected to be quick this season.
Forward Titus Shelton slimmed down over the summer and is expected to be a major contributor in the up-tempo offense.
“Offensively, he is quicker to the ball,” Bromley said. “He’s better off penetration now. He’s got a little bit of drive game. Titus is going to be hard for big men to keep in front of themselves.”
Bromley said that Shelton, who was the conference’s defensive player of the year two years ago, could be even better defensively.
“He’s going to be quicker to the ball, quicker to jump,” Bromley said. “Quicker to get up on the glass and fight around the post, being a good team defender.”
Shelton, who has lost more than 30 pounds since beginning his Cal Poly career, noticed the results immediately upon returning from his summer-long workout regimen in Arizona.
“It helps offensively and defensively,” Shelton said. “I’ve already seen the improvements as far as defensive rebounding and blocking shots. And offensively, it’s pretty easy to see the difference in my quickness.”
Cal Poly will need Shelton to stay on the court this year after several key cogs departed from the Mustangs frontcourt.
Reserve power forward Coby Leavitt quit the team after last season, while Matt Hanson and Dreshawn Vance, each of whom played more than 18 minutes per game at the position last year, both graduated.
Manley, who was granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA for a back injury, could miss more time because of a bulging disc in his back, Bromley said.
The Mustangs also lost a coveted post presence when 7-foot recruit Anthony DiLoreto was arrested for allegedly participating in a bank robbery just weeks before he was to arrive on campus.
“The front line is very talented and quick – we just don’t have a lot of depth,” Bromley said. “We can’t come off with another 6-foot-8 guy and another 6-foot-8 guy. So the guys that we do have need to play stellar minutes, and they can’t get hurt.”
Cal Poly plays a myriad of teams from around the nation this year, from conferences such as the Atlantic Sun and USA.
The Mustangs will host Notre Dame de Namur at Mott Gym in an exhibition at 7 p.m. Monday before officially opening their season against Sun Belt Conference foe Arkansas-Little Rock at 7 p.m. Nov. 14.
At the BYU Tournament from Nov. 20 to Nov. 22, they play Rice, North Florida and the host Cougars.
Cal Poly will host Fresno State on Dec. 29 in a return of a bracket buster game from last season. It’s one of 15 home contests for the Mustangs – three more than last year.
Bromley said he’s pleased with how the schedule turned out, especially in the latter part of the season, where Cal Poly will host six games in a row before the conference tournament.
“That’s just huge,” Bromley said. “You need momentum, and you need to be playing well going into the conference tournament. If you can get a top-four seed, you’ve got a very good chance of playing in the NCAA Tournament.”
After being picked to finish as low as eighth in the conference this season, many of the team’s more experienced players remember defying critics both positively and negatively.
“My sophomore year, they picked us to finish seventh and we finished second in the conference, and we were one game off of winning the conference and we lost in the last couple minutes of the conference championship game,” Clark recalled.
Bromley expects the memories of seniors like Clark, Thomas and Shelton to keep the team from falling into a state of complacency.
“It starts with our seniors,” he said. “They’ve all had some great experience. They’ve played deep into the conference tournament. They’ve played in a championship game, so I think there’s added incentive and motivation.”
But just as two years ago they defied expectations, last season they failed to meet them. Picked to finish second, the Mustangs finished sixth.
“Its like adding fuel to a fire,” Clark said of the recently released preseason polls. “But most of the motivation comes from yourself. It’s nothing but a number to us. The returners have a different attitude this year. Everybody is just that much hungrier to be good. Nobody wants that feeling again.”
Bromley likened the sixth-place prediction to “being picked last at a gym pickup game” and said that the Mustangs would be more motivated because of it.
Shelton agreed and said he was ready to get back on the court to prove the naysayers wrong.
“There’s always motivation when you see that people don’t have respect for you like that,” Shelton said. “But coach says that respect is earned, and we’re looking to earn that respect.”