City of Basketball Love

Aron Minkoff (@AronMinkoff)
--

After a Final Four appearance in 2008, Ursinus has struggled to put together a winning season, much less get back to the NCAA Tournament.

Dating back to the 2009-2010 season, it’s been five consecutive years under .500 for the Bears and head coach Kevin Small, who’s entering his 15th season at the helm.

A year ago, Ursinus was 10-15 overall, with a 7-11 mark in Centennial Conference play.

Now, there’s finally reason for optimism.

Last season the Bears were young and inexperienced, but with all five starters returning--and a number of them still underclassmen--the future is looking up in Collegeville.

“I think that we have a really good group of kids,” Small said. “We have really worked hard to really recalibrate. We have a really proud tradition, we have been one of the best teams in our region for over a decade, we have been first or second in our conference for over a decade, and we have not been as good recently and have worked really hard to recalibrate that and the group that we have right now really represents doing it the right way.”

Last year, the Bears the team started out 0-7, the worst start in Small’s tenure. The young team showed resilience though, and battled through that early season adversity to finish with a 10-15 recording, including a win over then fourth-ranked Dickinson College.

One of those young players who played a meaningful role for the Bears last season is sophomore point guard Brian Rafferty. The 6-foot-4 Rafferty led the Centennial Conference with a five assists per game last season, to go along with 4.4 ppg as well.

“I am excited to be back in the swing of things,” Rafferty said. “I think we have a great group of guys, just building on last year, we started off slow last year, 0-7, but we fought through and had some positives towards the end of the season. We are returning everybody, I have a great feeling about the season.”

Rafferty will feel the pressure to lead his team this season, but the added year of experience will certainly allow him to build upon what has already been a successful start to his college basketball career.

“The moment I saw Brian I thought we was a perfect fit for the type of things that we do here,” Small said. “He is hard-working, he is bit of a throwback, his dad played for Herb Magee at Philly U, so he comes by it honestly, just old school basketball, super-high basketball IQ.”

Also returning alongside Rafferty is leading scorer, senior Malik Draper, who put up 13.3 ppg along with 5.8 rpg. In addition, junior Matt Knowles is due for a big season after finishing his sophomore campaign with 11.7 ppg. Those two will be two of the more seasoned veterans in the Ursinus lineup.

That 2014 recruiting class, which featured Rafferty, are now all sophomores, and while it starts with him, it certainly does not end there. Fellow sophomores Remi Janicot and Joe Lostracco contributed mightily last season. Janicot finished with 7.4 ppg and 7.2 rpg, while Lostracco, an Archbishop Wood product contributed 9.4 ppg and 5.5 rpg.

“I think they are a really special group of kids, they do it for the right reasons too,” Small said. “This isn’t Kentucky basketball, these guys are true student-athletes, and they are going off to do some amazing things and go to these incredible graduate schools, they do this because they actually really love basketball and I am just impressed with how hard these guys are working this fall.”

The Bears spent quite a lot of time together this summer, training for a couple of weeks before traveling to Europe to play two games against teams from Amsterdam and one from Paris. Ursinus went 3-0 on the international trip, perhaps a good sign for things ahead.

The team still has to go out and prove that they are capable of winning in the Centennial conference, a conference which featured three teams ranked in the top-25 last season in Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall and Johns Hopkins. Ursinus will have to prove that they belong among the elite teams in their conference.

“I am quietly optimistic,” Small said. “ I think that we have a really good group of kids, we have really worked hard to really calibrate and we have a really proud tradition”