OVC Basketball: Preseason power rankings for 2023-24 season

9. Lindenwood Lions – Head Coach Kyle Gerdeman

2022-23 record: 11-21 overall, 6-12 in the OVC

Lindenwood won two, heart-stopping overtime games during the season’s final week and earned a trip the OVC tournament. Only eight of the conference’s teams qualify and winning those thrillers turned an adequate first Division 1 season into a good one.

Unfortunately, most of the players making those heroic shots were seniors and have run out of eligibility. That’s the bad news.

The great news is that second-team all-conference wing Keenon Cole decided to stay in St. Charles, Missouri. After flirting with the portal the OVC’s best three-point shooter (.463) and tenth leading rebounder (5.7 per game) is back to give leadership and scoring (12.9 ppg) to Kyle Gerdeman’s second OVC season.

Scrappy forward David Ware and sophomore guard Tommie Williams mostly played in the shadows of those graduating seniors, but each contributed nearly four points per game and Ware grabbed over four boards. Williams has great quickness and is an outstanding perimeter defender.

Remember this name. Darius Beane is beginning his fifth D1 season after eligibility issues held him out of last season. He is a sleeper among the returners.

Gerdeman is excited about his newcomers. Two D1 transfers Keith Hayman and Amoro Lado, bring experience and some athleticism. Lado played just nine games at Hawaii last year after appearing in 27 the season before. The 6’7 grad student Hayman, made 37% of his long distance shots for Northern Arizona where he started 37 games and appeared in 98.

Jeremiah Talton comes from the highly successful John A. Wood junior college where he averaged 21 points and five boards. Nathan Johnson comes from another junior college with a rich tradition in Coffeyville CC. He averaged 12 points last season. Both players are guards with good size.

6’7 Jaylon McDaniel and 6’8 Isaac Ondekane each played at highly regarded Sunrise Christian Academy before heading to separate junior colleges. Now they are teammates at Lindenwood. They appear ready to contribute immediately.

Coming straight out of the prestigious Link Year Academy is perhaps the jewel of this recruiting class. The only freshman on Gerdeman’s team is Colin Ruffin. The 6’4 guard was a top 20 player in Missouri prior to his year at Link. Gerdeman and others believe Ruffin can be an OVC star.

Building on last year’s finish won’t be easy. The Lions open with Nebraska and Iowa State and blending the newcomers into the Lindenwood culture could be difficult, but Gerdeman took his team to Italy this summer and significant bonding has already occurred.