The DU basketball team is the youngest in Division I this year.
With an average age of just 18.9 years old, the men’s basketball team has a challenge in front of it that it is ready to face.
The team’s challenge is to outrun, outscore and out play every other team out there and do it all with only five returning players, said head coach Joe Scott.
“We’re really young but at the same time we have three guys that played 35 minutes a game last year,” said Scott. “Really what we’re trying to do is grow up fast. I mean the quicker we grow up the tougher we get. The quicker we get tougher like that, the quicker we learn how hard it is to play on the road in college basketball, the more success we will have.”
Captain Nate Rohnert, the only returning junior this year, and sophomores Rob Lewis and Kyle Lewis will be looked to for leadership.
“That’s the other problem with a young team because you’re in the process of developing leadership, you don’t have leadership. A big part of our season is going to be Nate, Rob and Kyle,” said Scott.
“The tricky part with the sophomores is that they’ve only played this way for a year, so they’re still figuring it out. I think the trick is going to be not expecting too much from them, not expecting two sophomores to light the world on fire.”
Being out on a court playing ball is nothing new to these three though. Rohnert started every game last year and had 3.9 rebounds per game and an 8.5 scoring average.
Rob Lewis played in every game last year, averaging 8.7 points per game. He shot 51.6 percent from the field, the sixth best mark in the Sun Belt Conference.
Kyle Lewis also played every game, starting in all but one. He earned the title of eleventh best mark in the SBC for shooting from the three-point range.
One of the most immediate challenges that the Pioneers will face is at the beginning of their season. Six of the first seven games this year will be on the road, starting at Northern Iowa, then at Lamar and back home to face Northern Colorado before taking off again for four more games.
“[The] start of the year is going to be a big challenge and then it’s going to be our responses to that start that matter,” said Scott. “And then the ultimate real challenge is that are we better in January than December, better in February than January… our ability to sustain improvement and make it show up deep in the season.”
The Pioneers lost all 16 away games last season, a record they are trying to improve on.
Though challenging, especially for new players, Scott sees the first few games as a way to toughen up the team and help prepare them for the rest of the season.
“You can take the easy route and play a ton of home games and play this patsy schedule and try to give your guys what I call fake confidence, or you can make it hard and test your guys’ resiliency and strength and then you have those character traits forever, and that is real confidence.”
