Ten years ago, the UNBC Timberwolves won their first men's basketball national championship when they beat the host SAIT Trojans of Calgary in the Canadian College Athletic Association final.
Friday night at the Northern Sport Centre the T-wolves will take on the Victoria Vikes to begin their eighth season playing university basketball in the Canada West Conference.
Winning games is a difficult achievement at either level, university or college, and the T-wolves enter the new season knowing that after losing four of their starters to graduation last year, their young and inexperienced team will inevitably feel growing pains trying to find their way through the U Sports wilderness.
Gone are starters Vaggelis Loukas, Jovan Leamy, James Agyeman and Austin Chandler. Their absence puts the onus on returning veteran Anthony Hokanson (fifth-year forward), Vova Pluzhnikov (fourth-year guard), Sage Gosal (fifth-year guard) and Tyrell Laing (fourth-year guard) to lead the way for the rookies and returning sophomores.
"It's obviously a fairly large change from the last couple years, we're a lot younger than we've been and we have some guys playing in some new roles," said UNBC head coach Todd Jordan, about to begin his 10th season at the helm. "Tyrell has moved into a much bigger role, as well as a couple of our younger guys, so we bring a lot of youth and a lot of young guys off the bench. All our veteran guys, Tyrell, Vova, Sage and Anthony, are all taking on increased roles this year."
Colburn Pearce, now in his second year at UNBC since being plucked from the Duchess Park Condor high school ranks, will also see a lot more court time at guard, as will guard Chris Ross and Spencer Ledoux, who will have more opportunity to use his six-foot-six reach to get to the hoop as a forward.
The T-wolves added a big northerner to their lineup when they recruited six-foot-six forward Saymon Loki from Smithers (Bulkley Valley Secondary). First-year guard Dylon Matthews comes to UNBC from Seacove Secondary in North Vancouver, Ross's high school team, while rookie Fareed Shittu is a six-foot-six product of Harry Ainlay High School in Edmonton.
"Fareed is super-exciting and I think he's going to be a fan favourite around he because he does video-game stuff as far as his ability to leap and dunk," said Jordan. "He's late to the game, started playing in Grade 10 or 11, and he's a young guy with not a lot of experience but he's getting an opportunity with us to be thrown out there in situations every single day."
Two other promising recruits won't play any games this year. Six-foot-five Daniel Kopf is in his third year of eligibility. He was born in Canada but grew up in the Czech Republic and played semiprofessional basketball there last season which requires him to red shirt. Rohtosh Mattu is a third-year transfer from the University of Victoria and the native of Patialo, India will also be confined to the practice roster.
The T-wolves will certainly be hard -pressed to match their success of last year when they finished 9-11 and made the playoffs for a second-straight season. With so many new faces in the lineup T-wolves fans will have to be patient waiting for them to develop.
UNBC went 0-7 in the preseason. They started with two preseason games at home against Mount Royal, then went to Manitoba for a two-game set and ended their exhibition season with three games at the Waterloo tournament in Ontario.
"We played quite a competitive preseason, we threw the guys into the fire in the preseason," said Jordan. "We haven't won yet but we kind of expected it would be a development process with us being some young this year. I think we've grown every weekend we've played and seen some really positive stuff now that they've seen some live game action."
The Vikes, who finished just ahead of UNBC last year at 10-10, are a big team. They have seven players who stand six-foot-five or taller and that favours Victoria winning the board battles this weekend.
"This is a pretty big landmark year for our program, it's 20 years since we had our first year in the CCAA and 10 years since our national championship," said Jordan, who was an assistant coach of the T-wolves under head coach Mike Raimbault until he left to take over the women's team at Qwest University the year the T-wolves won.
"We wanted to bring back guys not just from that team but alumni who have been a major part of the program and we have a number of alumni coming back. We have guys coming back like Billy Chang, Sam Raphael, Charles Marton, Matt Mills and Dennis and Dan Stark and it will be exciting to give those guys recognition.
They have plenty of experience with four fifth-year players - G Mason Loewen, F Hayden Lejeune, G Jordan Charles and F Jake Newman, as well as fourth-year guard Taylor Montgomery Stinson. Another player to watch is third-year G Scott Kellum, Canada West's rookie of the year in 2018-19.
Seven members of that 2009-10 Canadian college championship men's team are expected to be in attendance, along with a number of other former T-wolves, at a special ceremony before Saturday's game against the Vikings at the NSC.
