Charlie Jacob passes the ball during the 2021 season. (Photo by Clara Richards | Student Life)

As the WashU Men’s Basketball Team walked onto the court at the University of Missouri Thursday night, head coach Pat Juckem knew one thing for certain: the Bears were going to face a lot of pressure, and not just from Missouri’s full-court press. How his team would respond to that pressure, however, was one of many uncertainties surrounding the WashU program heading into its first game of the season. The Bears also face questions about what roles the team’s many young stars will play and how they will replace their two leading scorers from last season. 

Although the visiting Bears lost the preseason exhibition match 89-61, Juckem was proud of his team’s performance. “I’m really pleased with how we handled the whole experience. You know, going in, playing an SEC team, they’re going to throw some things at you from a size and athleticism perspective that certainly challenged our concepts,” he said after the game. “I was very pleased with our approach. I thought our guys represented our program and ourselves very well.”

Missouri, who plays in the Southeastern Conference, one of the most competitive in Division 1, has a much larger program than the Division 3 teams that the Bears normally face. As a D1 program, they also had considerably more practice time in the preseason with looser NCAA regulations about how much time the team could put in on the court. Juckem added that the game provided the Bears an opportunity to test themselves and grow: “We looked at it as an opportunity for our growth as a team. It was a game, but it was an exhibition. We went in with the mindset of we’re going to compete and win every possession we can, and we’re going to be better when we come out of it.” 

The Bears lost two of their best players from last season in Jack Nolan, who was drafted to the NBA G League, and the late Justin Hardy. This year’s version of the Bears squad features many young players ready to step into key roles. Out of the starting five Juckem chose Thursday, three of them — Drake Kindsvater, Jake Wolf, and defending UAA Rookie of the Year Hayden Doyle — are sophomores. They started the game alongside freshman guard Will Grudzinski and graduate student Charlie Jacob, who was named the UAA Defensive Player of the Year last season. Juckem said that he is excited to see his younger players grow, stating that Grudzinski and the two other freshmen, Yogi Oliff and Calvin Kapral, are “really coming along and improving, just like all our players are. They’ve grown substantially since October 15th [the first day of practice]…They all have room to improve, none of them are close to their ceilings, which is the exciting thing about this team.”

Throughout the early stages of the game, WashU demonstrated it was ready to battle with its in-state foes. Although the hosts scored the first five points of the game, the Bears quickly knotted the score up with a five-point run of their own. This back-and-forth trend continued throughout the first half, although Missouri remained on the front foot for the opening ten minutes. The Bears eventually clawed ahead of the Tigers for their first lead around the halfway mark of the opening period, as a 7-0 run, which included five points from the veteran Jacob, gave them a 19-18 lead. The Bears converted their hot streak into a 23-20 lead with eight minutes remaining in the first half, but that three-point lead would end up being both the largest and last one the Bears managed during the contest. 

While WashU looked capable of keeping Missouri within striking distance throughout the opening period, the hosts began to pull away about 12 minutes into the game. The Tigers electric offense and potent defense were on full display as the Division 1 side scored 15 straight points across a four minute stretch. Missouri burst out to a 35-23 lead and never looked back, as they would go on to stay in front for the rest of the game and take a 45-30 lead into the break.

Just like the first half, the second one began with the teams exchanging buckets back and forth. Although they were trailing by double digits, the Bears never gave up and managed their best stretch of the game midway through the second half. After trailing 59-44, two Grudzinski three-pointers and a Doyle layup cut the Missouri lead down to 9. The 8-2 run for the Division 3 side forced Missouri coach Dennis Gates to call a timeout to halt the momentum. Unfortunately for WashU, the SEC stalwarts showed their quality and resilience, scoring eight straight points out of the timeout to reestablish a 69-52 lead with seven minutes to go.

As the clock wound down, both coaches utilized the opportunity to test out their depth off of the bench. One notable performance for WashU came from senior Nate Bloedorn, who has spent the last two years recovering from a knee injury suffered his freshman season. The forward scored nine points and grabbed four rebounds in ten minutes of action and looks ready to finally be a key contributor to the team this winter.

 In the end, Missouri’s star power proved to be too much for the Bears. Missouri’s senior Kobe Brown, who was recently named a preseason all-SEC selection, led the team with a 25-point double-double and senior Isiaih Mosley, a coveted transfer from Missouri State, tacked on 11 points. Missouri won by a final score of 89-61, with the 28 point final margin being the largest of the game. The Tigers outshot the Bears with a 56% field goal percentage, compared to the visitors’ 42%. While WashU made six three-pointers, one more than the Tigers, Missouri was dominant on the low blocks. They outscored the Bears 64-36 in the paint and outrebounded them 38-33. Despite the difference, Juckem said that he thought his team held its own on the boards, pointing to the fact that the two teams tied in offensive rebounds. “We pride ourselves in being a strong rebounding team both defensively and offensively and I thought we saw examples of both potentially being really good for this team,” Juckem said. 

Going into the game, one of the biggest questions for the Bears was how they were going to replace the scoring of Nolan and Hardy. The answer, as Juckem expected, was through a balanced attack, relying on numerous players to step up. Kindsvater ended the game as the team’s leading scorer, putting 12 points on the board, followed by Grudzinski, Jacob, and Bloedorn with 9. After the game, Kindsvater said he feels prepared to step up as a scorer this year. “Last year, I was more so thrust into our offense and didn’t really have a place I fit into…This year, I feel like I can get more of a full paced role in our offense,” he said.

One area of improvement that Juckem mentioned was the inability of his team to take care of the ball. Though he was proud that Missouri’s full court pressure only forced one turnover, he was disappointed in his team’s 15 turnovers in their settled half-court offense. “We turned it over more than we would like in the half court so we would like to improve that. A lot of their scoring [came from] our half court turnovers,” he said.

 While the loss uncovered some aspects of their game the Bears need to work on, Juckem said the team is already addressing them. “There are areas where we got exposed that we’ve highlighted in subsequent film sessions,” he said, adding that those areas have “really been a focus of ours in practice since.”

Although uncertainties remain about what the squad will look like this fall, they’re optimistic about their ability to run the table. “We have to figure out what our identity is. We’re trying to work with individual players’ strengths and see how we can best utilize them to win,” Kindsvater said. He added that “as a team, our main goal is always to win a championship,” and pointed towards Fort Wayne, Indiana, the site of the Division III final four, as the team’s end goal. 

The Bears, whose season ended in a heartbreaking second round loss to Wheaton last year, will begin their official 2022-23 campaign on Tuesday, November 8th at home against Blackburn College. Though the Bears beat the Beavers 90-59 last year, Juckem says their opponents are a new team. “They had a heck of a run in their conference tournament and played well in the NCAA tournament. [They’re] a team coming off a NCAA berth with a really talented player in [Chanz] Aldridge, [who] is a terrific talent. He did not play in our game last year. He’s as good as almost any player that we’ll see this year.” 

Though the Bears aren’t sure what new challenges Tuesday’s opponents will bring, they know one thing for sure — this game will be the first mark on the board in a path that they hope will end late into March. The way in which they play when their record is on the line should answer any remaining questions about this new WashU squad.