CSB+SJU basketball teams to open season next week

The CSB+SJU basketball teams enter this year following successful 2023-24 seasons, particularly in conference gameplay. The Johnnies finished with an overall record of 20-6, with an 18-2 record in MIAC play. The Bennies concluded their season with a record of 15-11 and a conference record of 12-8.

Both teams are focused on maintaining a mindset of being focused on each game as it comes, and not looking too far ahead of their schedule. SJU head coach Pat McKenzie stressed that his team is focused on the here and now and what they can control each day and CSB head coach Mike Durbin agreed.

“You can’t start looking two or three games down the road because then you’re going to get beat by somebody that maybe shouldn’t beat you,” Durbin said.

Coming off a season in which they led all of NCAA Division III basketball in shooting percentage (.516) and three-point percentage (.409), the Johnnies look to continue that into this season. A roster that brings a lot of depth and experience is something that they expect to contribute towards that goal.

“We’ve got great depth, and I think we have the chance to be pretty good offensively again,” McKenzie said. “We want to continue to tray and play through the strengths of our depth and our ability to shoot it.”

To become a more well-rounded team for this season, the Johnnies put an offseason emphasis on getting better defensively, as well as improving physically, becoming bigger, faster and stronger.

“A big area of focus for us was defensively, with as much as we have coming back, that was an area where we weren’t as good as we wanted or needed to be,” McKenzie said.

The Johnnies will be expecting contributions from their entire roster: returners who know their role on the team and first-year players who are making the transition to the college athlete lifestyle.

“I’ve been really happy with this group; I really like our freshmen. They seem to have bought in to what it takes,” McKenzie said.

Entering his 39th season as the head coach of the Bennies, Durbin is continuing his strategy of letting the players dictate the goals and expectations for the team. With a first-year class that includes ten players, the team will lean on an experienced upper-class group of players to facilitate the direction they go this season. CSB senior Sophia Jonas explained via email that the first-years may need to step into a bigger role than they were expecting coming in, but that the team is excited to see what they can accomplish.

The Bennies began putting in work as a team by competing in a summer league against other conference teams.

“This helps us grow as a team during the summer before school and the season starts,” Jonas said.

This puts them on a path to achieving some of their bigger goals for the season, which include proving themselves against non-conference opponents and, ultimately, making a deep playoff run.

Despite losing three standout seniors from last season, the Bennies aim to start this season playing as well as they finished the last one. They closed out the regular season winning six of their last nine games, all of which were inter-conference games.

“It’s probably difficult to say, ‘let’s pick up where we left off.’ But I think we have returning players that do understand at the end of last season we were playing very, very well,” Durbin said.

Both teams will tip off their seasons on Nov. 9. The Johnnies open their season at home with a non-conference game against the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. The Bennies begin their season with their annual Tipoff Tournament, playing their first game at home against the University of Minnesota Morris.