Men’s Basketball Opens Season With Exhibition Win

Despite what his players may think, Texas State men’s basketball Coach Danny Kaspar doesn’t want perfection. He wants improvement.

While the Bobcats secured a 76-57 win over Texas Wesleyan in their exhibition game Friday, Kaspar says the team has much room for progress on defense.

“I saw some good things,” Kaspar said. “I saw some negative things out there. But I guess that’s what these exhibition games are for.”

In the Bobcat’s win over the Texas Wesleyan Rams, Kaspar said he saw glimpses of last season in his team’s play with regard to maintaining large leads. Last season, the team finished 1-9 in games in games decided by six points or less. 

On Friday, Texas State maintained their lead for the entire game with the exception of less than a minute of tied play. The lead ranged from as much as 23 to as small as one point.

“We opened up strong and we relaxed,” Kaspar said. “It’s just a game of runs and we’ve got to be a little more disciplined and focused in terms of not letting our opponents come back from large deficits. That was the basis of my talk after the game.”

After the game Kaspar called on his team to “grow up,” and refrain from complacency. He noted that his team might have celebrated a win too early or relaxed too early—all what Kaspar called signs of immaturity.

In addition to this, both Kaspar and Emani Grant, senior forward, noted that the 11 offensive rebounds afforded to their Divison II exhibition competitor were problematic.

“For the first game it went really well, first game jitters, at home for the first time we had to go out and show everyone what we had,” Gant said. “I give us a C, we could’ve done a lot of things better.”

The Bobcats added nine new players to their roster this season. Jamarcus Weatherspoon, junior guard, is one of the team’s newest additions. In his first game for Texas State, Weatherspoon finished with 13 points, five rebounds and four assists.

Gant says that while Weatherspoon and others were successful on the court, the cohesiveness of play can improve. The chemistry is there.

 “I feel like we’re still figuring it out,” Gant said. “We’re still gelin’. There’s a lot of new dudes, we all have to come together but we have good chemistry about ourselves.”

Kaspar mentioned that the team’s win is an improvement from last season’s 28-point win over Division III competitor, Sul Ross. 

Texas Wesleyan added two Divison I recruits to their roster. One of which, Merv Lindsay, began his college career at Kansas University. Because of this, Kaspar says he feels better about his team’s capabilities this year. 

Though Gant initially appraised team performance as a “C,” both Kaspar and Gant believe the team can have better games.

“I feel like we have the potential to have ‘A’ games,” Gant said. “We have players that play hard—play hard on defense. It’s just little things that we still gotta figure out. We just have to go into practice everyday with a more focus, more determined to keep getting better every day.”

From one season to the next, Kaspar says he has seen improvement in toughness and maturity, but Gant wants to give him more.

“He just wants everything perfect, you got to go perfect—but we’re going to get there,” Gant said. “We’ll be perfect.

Mariah Medina is an Assistant Sports Editor with the University Star where this story originally published, and it is reprinted here through a news agreement  |  @CorridorNews