Baker University men’s basketball is seeking another successful season looking into the 2024-2025 season, with familiar faces returning to the court.
As Head Coach Sean Dooley enters his 13th season at Baker, he is not surprised to see his squad ranked 19th in the NAIA and first in the Heart of America Conference.
“I’m not surprised… not just because of the success that we had but we have ten seniors, and when you have a team that has that experience returning to the team, the polls will tend to favor on your side,” Dooley said.
Many would say that being at the top of the preseason polls is a great thing, but for Dooley, he saw it more as a “target on our back” especially with the four challenging out-of-conference matchups in the first three weeks of the season. This includes teams such as Ottawa University and University of Saint Mary; two teams in high contention for the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference (KCAC) and others including Keiser University and Florida Memorial University who both made a run at the NAIA national tournament last year.
Looking back at the 2023-2024 season with Baker’s first NAIA tournament win, Dooley hasn’t brought any goals pertaining to the NAIA tournament to the team, as he wants the team to “focus on today” but does feel hopeful that they can reach that milestone this season.
“We feel that we have the talent in our program to make a run at it, but there’s a lot of things that have to go our way… obviously health is one of them but overall the guys coming together and gelling at the right time,” Dooley said.
Familiar names include seniors, Quentin Harvey, Noah Rigatuso and Korey Jones who hope to make their final footprint at Baker while junior Ty Henry wants to contribute to that success making that dream a reality. Other seniors, Ahmed Mahgoub and Nick Whittick are two guys who didn’t get playing time in the earlier part of the 23-24 season but showed positive signs of success in the back half.
The team will play its season opener in Ottawa on Monday, Oct. 28 at 8 p.m. in hopes of starting off the season strong and will face the University of Saint Mary on Monday, Nov. 4 in their home opener.
