Missouri Valley Basketball: Predicting stars for each team in 2017-18

ST. LOUIS, MO - MARCH 5: Members of the Wichita State Shockers celebrate after winning the Missouri Valley Conference Basketball Tournament Championship against the Illinois State Redbirds at the Scottrade Center on March 5, 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) /

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ST. LOUIS, MO – MARCH 5: Head coach Muller of the Illinois State Redbirds directs his players against the Wichita State Shockers during the Missouri Valley Conference Basketball Tournament Championship game at the Scottrade Center on March 5, 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) /

Illinois State Redbirds – Phil Fayne

Head coach Dan Muller will be losing a ton from their regular season co-champs a year ago. Not only did MiKyle McIntosh and Deontae Hawkins become grad transfers and left for power conference teams, but the conference POY Paris Lee graduated as well. Lee did all the little things for the team and was the most efficient player in the conference in terms of varying percentage categories.

They will return one player, however, that will return to spearhead the reloading efforts is junior Phil Fayne. By no means was the forward a scrub, he chipped in nine points to the team along with over six rebounds a game. With Hawkins gone, there’s a good chance he can climb up the second in the conference in rebounding, with No. 1 coming up later in the list.

Where Fayne and the rest of the team will have to do better next year is scoring. They finished seventh in that category and with the top three scorers gone, multiple Redbirds will need to step up.

The hope overall for the team will be that their defense, which was first by a mile last year and will remain to keep them in games where the offense goes into droughts. If Fayne can get to 15 and 10 a game, he could be on the shortlist for player of the year.