We are counting down the days to the start of the college basketball season.
If you’re reading this on the day is was published, we have 47 days to the official start of College Basketball, and 36 days until we can see the team in action against K-State (presuming it’s televised).
The Full Non-Conference Schedule:
- October 23rd — at Kansas State (exhibition)
- October 29th — at UNLV (exhibition)
- November 3rd — vs Cleveland State
- November 6th — vs Saint Louis (in St. Louis)
- November 9th — vs SIU-Edwardsville
- November 15th — vs Marquette (in Chicago)
- November 18th — vs Alcorn State
- November 20th — vs Le Moyne
- November 24th — vs Evansville
- November 27th — vs Arkansas Pine Bluff
- December 1st — vs Pittsburgh (ACC-SEC Challenge)
- December 6th — vs Kansas (in Kansas City)
- December 12th — vs Nebraska (in Kansas City)
- December 18th — at Indiana
- December 20th — vs Illinois (in St. Louis)
- December 22nd — vs Chicago State
After the last few years of a poor lineup of Q4 games in the non-conference schedule, Missouri pulled a 180 and have schedule as well as anyone in the country. On top of playing Illinois and Kansas as previously scheduled, the Tigers are playing neutral court matchups against SLU, Marquette, Nebraska, and a road game at Indiana. There’s no question Dennis Gates stepped it up.
Let’s Meet: the Le Moyne Dolphins
Do you know where DeWitt, New York is? Likely, no. But I’m sure at least some of you are aware of Syracuse, and DeWitt is basically a suburb. It’s a Jesuit school founded post-World War 2, as the first co-ed Jesuit school in the United States. So that’s kind of neat, right?
It’s a super small school. Less than 4,000 students total. Their most famous alum is probably Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Le Moyne is new to Division 1 athletics. Before making the transition to D1 in 2023, the school was a Division II school going back to the early 50s. Their Lacrosse team won 6 national championships on the men’s side, and one additional title on the women’s side.
Perhaps Le Moyne basketball is most famous for two things, beating Syracuse in a 2009 exhibition game, and being the launching point for future hall of fame coach John Beilein. Beilein started his head coaching career in high school in the 70s, but a nine year stint at Le Moyne is what catapulted him into D1 competition. He ended up moving to Canisius, then Richmond, and then West Virginia before taking the Michigan job. Beilein was the first coach in Le Moyne history to win 20 games, and the first coach since Tommy Niland (who started the program) to get them into the NCAA (D2) tournament.
Head Coach | Nate Champion | 7th Season 85-96
It’s Champion’s 7th season as head coach of his alma mater, but his record only reflects 6 seasons because the school did not participate in any games during the 2020-21 season due to the pandemic.
As a player he was on one team which played in the NCAA Tournament, in 2014. He was the leader in minutes and scoring on that team. As a coach, he was named coach of the year for the Northeast 10 conference in 2020, and was named to the NBCA’s 30 under 30 that same year.
The sledding since hasn’t been easy. Following a 19-9 year his first season, the COVID year really knocked the wind out of the program. They went 12-15 in 2022, and 15-15 in 2023, and then made the move to D1 where the program has yet to eke back over .500.
They did go 9-7 in conference play, but the momentum was stunted again the next season when they dropped to 354th in KenPom and won just 9 games. Last season was an improvement, however, and they climbed back inside the top 300 and went 10-8 in league play.
Series History | 0-0
Only being in the ranks of Division 1 for three seasons, it’s not surprising a team from New York and Missouri haven’t yet met. In year one Le Moyne scheduled Georgetown, Villanova, and Penn State and lost all three games. In 2024-25 they played Syracuse tight in the season opener, but got blown out by UConn and Notre Dame. Then last year they lost to Xavier, Texas, and Boston College.
This season they open with Nebraska, and take on Missouri on the 20th, and also have Clemson on the docket.
What about the team now?
There isn’t much returning so the success for this team will depend greatly on its transfers. Le Moyne only returns three players off its roster from last season, and those three only combined to play in 35 games for 258 minutes.
Ametri Moss is one of those players, he played in just 2 games to start the season and played a lot in those games. There’s nothing on the search engines about an injury, but I’m assuming he got hurt. Because guys don’t average 27 minutes a game and score 10 points against Xavier and then disappear.
Also returning are Trevor Roe and Josiah Lee, each were lightly used back end of the rotation guys.
To replenish the scoring, Champion signed two JUCO wings in Kole Williams and Isaiah Brown. They also lured Ty Williams, a flexible forward from Northeastern, out of the transfer portal. Williams averaged 4.4 points as a freshman. Kaden Stuckey will return to Missouri after playing against the Tigers last season for VMI, the junior forward did not score in 14 minutes of action.
They also added Jayden Teat, a Junior point guard from Sacramento State, 6’10 center Przemek Hartman from Louisiana-Monroe, and Damien King, a sophomore wing from UT-Martin.
Le Moyne is preseason ranked #323 by BartTorvik.com, so this should be an easy win for the Tigers.