City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This article is part of CoBL's 2015-16 College Season Preview, which will run from October 2-November 13, the first day of games. For the complete rundown, click here)

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There’s two ways to look at the University of the Science’s roster this season.

On one hand, the Devils return four starters and six of their top seven players from likely the best team in school history, a 25-6 squad that not only made the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever but also beat Drexel, a Division I opponent.

On the other hand, the one player who did graduate was Garret Kerr, the Middle Township (N.J.) grad who became a two-time Division II Player of the Year. Despite being a 6-foot-3 power forward, Kerr leaves USciences as the program’s all-time leading scorer (2,434 points) and rebounder (1,391 rebounds), and was arguably as important to his team as any other player in the country, regardless of division.

Given his options, Devils coach Dave Pauley chose the one you would expect: Garret who?

“The first thing is you forget about it--that year’s over and you don’t mention his name,” the 16th-year head coach said. “We return four starters that were a big part of that team, so I think that’s what you focus on. We can wax nostalgic about all that, but you move forward.”

Pauley wasn’t totally unwilling to discuss his now-former star, who’s beginning his professional career in the Czech Republic. He broke his own rule of not mentioning Kerr’s name about 15 seconds after he declared the rule, and all of the players acknowledged the gap his departure leaves in the roster.

“We can talk for an hour about his stats, but just his everyday mental approach--never had a bad practice, never took a day off, never out of shape,” Pauley said. "I could go on and on but that’s all mental things that he brought to the floor, and the guys, he was like a pied piper, guys followed him.”

However, USciences’ cupboard is far from bare.

Senior point guard T-John Casiello was the nation’s leader in assist-to-turnover ratio last year with more than four dimes for every mistake. Alongside him in the backcourt is a second team All-Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC) selection last year, Sho Da-Silva, who averaged 13.5 ppg as the second-highest scorer on the team despite his role as the team’s sixth man.

Two more seniors, Wes Kerr (7.7 ppg) and Dylan Kerwin (7.0 ppg), each started 29 games a year ago, as did sophomore big man Will Gregorits. And another current sophomore, Flo Da-Silva, like his older brother came off the bench to play 20-plus minutes per contest, averaging 5.4 ppg and 2.3 apg as the backup point guard.

And they all want to prove the same thing--the Devils last year weren’t the product of one player’s ability.

“I think there’s a lot of pressure on us, but I think it’s going to get us there,” said Sho Da-Silva, a health sciences major who’s in the process of applying to several medical schools in the Philadelphia area. “Pressure’s what drives you, so we like it, we like everyone watching us, saying ‘now that Garret’s not here, what are they going to do?’ We’ve got something to prove.”

Casiello, a three-year starter at point guard, echoed his teammates’ general attitude about the season.

“I think we’ve got the pieces to do it again and be as good as we were last year,” he said. “We’ll have to work some things out, finding scoring and rebounding, but we’re confident.”

How the Devils do this season will depend quite a bit on the play of Flo Da-Silva and fellow sophomore Gregorits, a 6-8 center who averaged 6.0 ppg and 3.5 mpg as the team’s starting big man.

Unlike the seniors, whose abilities are somewhat established--Casiello, who averaged 4.8 ppg last year, isn’t going to suddenly quadruple his scoring--it’s the youngsters who can take the biggest steps forward in their production.

“I think they got a taste of what it was about, college basketball, academics,” Pauley said. “Their play will be counted on, I’m optimistic that they’ll both have very good seasons; they had very good seasons last year but now they’ll have to do a little bit more.”

While Pauley and the rest of the Devils might be trying to forget about Garret Kerr, there’s no denying the legacy he left at the school.

After all, now that USciences has made it to the NCAA Tournament once, what’s to stop them from making it again?

“When I was an assistant (at USciences in the 1980s), we went to the NAIA, that was a major accomplishment, no other science school had ever done that in the NAIA,” Pauley said; the school joined the NCAA in 2003. “If you do it once, you can do it again. We set the bar a little bit higher and I think that’s a good thing--embrace it.”