The expectations are high, the talent is good and the school is excited about the upcoming season for the DU men’s basketball team. Last season the men were one game away from making the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history and now this season they have even more incentive to get there.”Not making the NCAA tourney hurt us last year, and we really want to come out and win more games and make it to the tournament this year,” said senior Yemi Nicholson.Louisiana-Lafayette defeated DU 88-69 in the conference final to take Denver out of a bid for the NCAA tourney. None the less the Pioneers advanced to the post-season for the first time in 46 years as they were selected to play in the post-season NIT at University of San Francisco, which they lost 69-67 in heartbreaking fashion.”There is no pressure this year, we are just coming out to win again this season. We are not paying attention to any of the hype, we just want to come out and win and do better than we did last season,” said Nicholson.Last season the Pioneers finished with a school record 20 wins, SBC west champions and Yemi Nicholson and Coach Terry Carroll were player and coach of the year respectively in the SBC.”Losing Erick Benzel and Rodney Billups is tough for us, they were big team leaders for us and they are going to be big shoes to fill,” said the 6-11, 260 center from Aurora, Colorado.Both Benzel and Billups are playing professionally overseas and their leadership and terrific play are going to be missed this season. Denver has transfer guards Alex Cox (Queensland, Australia) and DaShawn Walker (Chicago, Ill.) along with returning players Steve Wetrich (Ottomwa, Iowa), Brett Seger (Omaha, Neb.), Anthony Oliver (Fremont, Calif.) and Brian Brown (Parker, Colo.) to help replace the two veterans. “This year’s team has more talent than last year’s, instead of 6-7 good players we are 9-10 players deep,” said assistant coach Marcus Mason.Last season Denver was picked to finish fifth in the western division of the SBC in the pre-season polls and finished the season first. This season the Pioneers were picked second behind Louisiana-Lafayette in the pre-season coach’s poll.”Getting picked to finish second still shows that everyone still feels that our program isn’t the top program in the Sun Belt Conference,” said Mason. “I think at the end of the year we will see who the best team is and that is the team that comes out and plays hard for 40 minutes.”Last season Nicholson averaged 18.1 points, 8.4 rebounds and 3.0 blocks per game for DU and is currently ranked the 11th best center in the nation by sportsline.com and is also currently predicted by numerous publications to be picked in the 2006 NBA draft. Also returning for Denver is junior forward Antonio Porch (Denver, Colo.) who averaged 12.8 ppg and 6.3 rpg on his way to being named to the SBC third team. Senior Andrew Carpenter (Toronto, Ontario) averaged 8.1 ppg and 4.7 rpg as the team’s small forward.”We just got to play hard on defense, we got enough people to score baskets on offense, if we don’t play hard on hard defense, anybody can beat us, so that is the key to everything we do this year,” said Porch.The Pioneers will open the season at the BP Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, Alaska from Nov. 18 to 20. They will open the tourney against Kennesaw State and could play other teams like Southern Mississippi, Lamar and San Diego State. After the tournament, DU will come home to play Colorado State at the Pepsi Center in the inaugural Colorado Classic. Then Denver will have home games against such teams as Northern Arizona (Dec. 1), Wyoming (Jan. 2), Louisiana-Lafayette (Jan. 7) and Western Kentucky (Feb. 9). The Pioneers will travel on the road to take on such teams as Stanford, Sacramento State, South Dakota State, North Dakota State and Northern Colorado. “I am looking forward to all of the games, and I want to win all of the games,” said Nicholson.Be sure to check out DU this season as all the games should be exciting.