Quote from: Stertorous Thunder on October 19, 2023, 10:39:58 PM
https://athletics.wheaton.edu/sports/mens-basketball/roster
Three disappointing missing names from the Wheaton roster: Micah Schnyders, Jacob Schauer and Cole Reid
The loss of Schnyders will hurt the most, but it appears that he was able to get back to D1 with a spot on the Eastern Michigan roster.
In what looks like it will be a rebuilding season, Jacob Schauer probably would have been rewarded with a decent amount of playing time for his years spent as a program player. It's a shame that he didn't participate in the Senior Night festivities, but he certainly has plenty of other opportunities to hear compliments from Mike Schauer and I have it on good authority that the highly accomplished young Schauer was offered a dream job.
Cole Reid's minutes decreased a little throughout last season, but he was viewed as a potential future all-conference big man. His absence is concerning because of the makeup of the rest of the roster. I don't know what kind of scheme Wheaton is going to run this season but the roster has only two non-guards listed. Connor Braun is a solid 6' 9" starter, but the only other player listed as a forward has a collegiate stat line of 1 shot attempted and 1 foul in 1 minute over 2 years. If I'm an opposing coach, I'm going to run the first three or four possessions through Braun to put him on the bench with foul trouble, and then watch my forwards back down all of the 6' Wheaton guards and score a lot of buckets in the paint. The Thunder better have personnel that can rain threes from everywhere if they're going to counterbalance their size deficit.
Wheaton had been fortunate to have a lot of experience on their squad in recent years, going back to their Final Four appearance, and even before. But this year, there's not much experience, at all.
Losing Schnyders does hurt, but he never seemed to live up to his billing last year. Didn't seem to find his groove at Wheaton.
And Jacob Schauer is making a great decision to move on to the next chapter in his life. While he would've seen some playing time this year, his efforts are better spent pursuing a career,
Cole Reid is an enigma, as he never even suited up after mid-December. My suspicion is that he ran into some academic difficulties that kept him off the court. Too bad, because he had great size and a nice touch, from what we saw from his limited play last season. The search for the next Nate Frank continues at Wheaton.
In terms of what a starting 5 looks like for Wheaton, my guess would be Schiavello, Sock, Braun, and maybe RJ Veiliz — the grad transfer from Western Oregon, along with
?. The most experience outside of the names above are Daniel Garza, who is coming back for another season of eligibility, and Billy Durkin. Outside of that, I don't think any other player on the team has logged more than 20 minutes of playing time in a Wheaton uniform in their entire careers.
They also added Noah Hedrick, who transferred in from Hope, where he came off the bench.
Freshmen recruits include Ty Ferguson from Columbus, IN; Soren Richardson from Northfield, MN; and Eli Will from Ashburn, VA.
). But there's a lot to be said for sharing the load, and having two regular and effective backcourt scorers means that opposing defenses need to account for more than one vector in terms of Wheaton's shot-taking; while Luke Anthony was a highly effective shooter in his own right last season, the remarkable thing about Wheaton's 2018-19 shot distribution was that Francis took more FG attempts than Anthony, Spencer, Adom, and Luke Peters combined. Mike Schauer is going to have a nice problem to solve when Wheaton's football season comes to an end and Anthony wears basketball livery again, because right now the Wheaton backcourt is doing just fine without him.