Mid-major Basketball: Early Central Arkansas Basketball 2020-21 preview

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN - DECEMBER 28: Rylan Bergersen #1 of the Central Arkansas Bears handles the ball while being guarded by Symir Torrence #10 of the Marquette Golden Eagles in the first half at the Fiserv Forum on December 28, 2019 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images) /

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NORMAN, OK – DECEMBER 3: Justin Foreman #5 of the Central Arkansas Bears (Photo by J Pat Carter/Getty Images) /

After a brutal start to last season, Central Arkansas Basketball is looking to move up the Southland Conference ladder for the 2020-21 season.

Heading into the 2019-20 college basketball season there were high expectations in Conway, Arkansas, a town about 30 miles south of the state capital in Little Rock. Central Arkansas Basketball was one of four teams to receive votes in the Southland Conference preseason poll to win the league and returned all but one of its key contributors from a season before.

Those preseason hopes quickly vanished with a 1-9 start to the season and the parting of ways with Russ Pennell, who all in all totaled 50 wins in 167 games in his tenure as the coach of the Bears. Anthony Boone stepped in and righted the ship, as UCA went 9-11 in conference, a middle of the pack finish in the competitive Southland.

Here we are again. Boone returns all but one contributor from a season ago, and one of them is an All-Southland Conference player in Rylan Bergersen (15.8 Pts, 4.5 Reb, 2.8 Ast) who is back for his senior season. Another reason for optimism in Conway is that the Southland Conference is going to come down a little bit this year.

Stephen F. Austin, Nicholls St, and Abilene Christian distanced themselves from the rest of the pack in 19-20 and each of the three loses its best player highlighted by the graduation of SFA’s Kevon Harris, the reigning conference POY. Apart from the three teams mentioned above, nobody else won more than 11 games in conference, so UCA doesn’t have a ton of mountains to climb.

All that said, Central Arkansas’s roster is composed in a way that they should be able to challenge for a conference title this year. But let’s not stop there, a 2 or 3 seed is not going to want to see these guys on the 15 or 14 line beneath them in March. They feature a potential Southland MVP in Bergersen, seven players expected to see major minutes that are 6 foot 7 or taller, and a senior point guard in De’Andre Jones (12.9 Pts, 3.9 Reb, 6.0 Ast) who led the conference in assists last season by a landslide.

Despite a disappointing record last season, the ingredients are there for Boone and the Bears to emerge as a team that can make some noise in 2020-21. Who are these Bears and what does the rotation look like? Let’s take a look.