A gritty, hardworking group with a healthy combination of final-year players, new talent and rookies — the men’s WolfPack basketball team is poised for a bounce-back season.
During the summer, the ‘Pack brought in two standout American guards in Steve Stinson and Erin Chamble among others to complement the core of established TRU players like Asher Mayan, Cyrus Harrison and Denys Bachurin.
“It’s a good mix of returning veterans and new faces,” Head Coach Chad Jacobson said. “We want to be a team that is very hard-nosed, tough and competes defensively. A team that rebounds the basketball; that does a lot of the dirty work.”
Jacobson added that the team’s competitive level and ability to work together will be crucial to its success this year.
Star forward Asher Mayan echoed this sentiment and added that he likes the offensive tempo that the ‘Pack has been showing in the pre-season and recent practices.
“We have a lot more shot creation and I think we play with a lot more pace this year,” Mayan, who’s in his final year, said. “We are really motivated to make an impact this year and people at TRU should be excited for it.”
According to coach Jacobson, one factor will determine whether the team has success in Canada West this year.
“It all comes down to our execution on both ends of the floor,” Jacobson said. “For us, that’s really what it’s about, our execution — obviously for the course of 40 minutes, a full basketball game, but also in the late game, in the fourth quarter when things are really on the line.”
Although they likely won’t see much in-game action this year, TRU also has some promising Kamloopsians waiting in the wings. South Kamloops Secondary graduates Thomas Nowicki and Charlie McKay cracked the roster as first-year students.
“It’s really important for us to have local athletes on our roster. I think that’s good for the program [and] it’s good for the community,” Jacobson said. “We certainly expect those guys to be able to develop into players that can win games down the road.”
A playoff birth is the overarching goal for the WolfPack this season, as last year’s 6-14 record was not enough to qualify.
“I was happy with the group last year. I thought they competed really hard,” Jacobson said. “We lost some close games throughout the year that had a major impact on us not making the playoffs.”
According to Jacobson, several injuries impacted the season’s performance last year. One of those injuries was the breaking of star forward Asher Mayan’s dominant arm in the first home preseason game of the 2023-24 season. He returned for the final ten games of the season, but the ‘Pack was unable to squeak into the playoffs.
“That whole last month of play was an adjustment period in terms of what feels like to play with an arm I hadn’t used in a while,” Mayan said. “After last season ended, I took a couple months off of playing… to make sure when I came back it’d be fully healed. That’s worked pretty well, I feel back to one-hundred per cent.”
With a healthy roster and some new faces, TRU will be looking to make their mark in the coming months.
Their regular season kicks off with their home opener at the Tournament Capital Centre on Halloween night against the UBCO Heat and runs for 20 games until the February playoffs begin.