Isiah Small is annoyed with the Sun Belt’s coaches.
Not because the league voted Texas State to finish fifth in the West Division and bottom-three overall with just 47 points in this year’s preseason coaches poll. It’s because they didn’t just go ahead and rank the Bobcats at the very bottom.
“I want them to put us last to be the underdog and work our way up,” the senior forward said. “We’ve got a chip on our shoulder, we’re gonna show what’s gonna happen.”
There’s obvious reasons to think the maroon and gold may take a step back this year. Texas State’s two leading scorers from a season ago, Nijal Pearson and Eric Terry, both graduated in the spring. The team also went through a tumultuous offseason in which former head coach Danny Kaspar was embroiled in a Title IX investigation, ultimately resulting in his resignation and the promotion of assistant coach Terrence Johnson as the new leader of the program.
But it’s almost as though the conference has forgotten about the rest of the Bobcats — those who made up the majority of a team that went 21-11 overall and were heading to the Sun Belt tournament semifinals before the season was prematurely shut down due to COVID-19. In addition to voting Texas State to finish 10th in the league, the conference’s coaches didn’t select any Bobcats to any of the Preseason All-Sun Belt teams either, which Small said they “feel some type of way” about.
“We’ve been picked lower than that since I’ve been here. So, those people have a job to do and it’s our job to prove them wrong. It’s really that simple,” Johnson said. “I would rather be picked there than be picked five spots higher. Because if I’m picked up five spots higher, I think it’s harder for me to get my message across to a team that doesn’t have a Nijal Pearson than it would be if we were picked where we are now. So we embrace it.”
Johnson, who was voted a top-five assistant coach in the Sun Belt by his peers this summer before becoming interim head coach, will be tasked with finding a way to fill both Pearson and Terry’s spots in the starting lineup.
Redshirt junior forward Alonzo Sule is an easy name to pencil in as Terry’s replacement, serving as the team’s sixth man each of the past two years, though the Bobcats added a trio of 6-foot-8 forwards in juniors Nighael Ceasar and Mason Hix and freshman Nate Martin to replenish the frontcourt depth. Texas State also still rosters a pair of 6-foot-7 seniors in Quentin Scott and Small.
The Bobcats’ wing spots are trickier to figure out, though, especially with Pearson’s absence. Senior guard Shelby Adams started in 17 games last season, mostly as the two-guard, and will likely take one of the wing slots. Redshirt senior guard Marlin Davis’ main minutes came as starting point guard Mason Harrell’s backup, but was able to fill in at the two often alongside Harrell.
In the lone game Texas State played without Pearson last season — a 60-57 loss at Appalachian State on Feb. 8 — the Bobcats rolled out a three-guard starting lineup of Harrell, Davis, Adams, Small and Terry. Johnson could do the same or try different variations of it with junior guard Caleb Asberry, who averaged 6.7 points per game last year, or one of the newcomers such as junior Darien Jenkins or freshman Dylan Dawson.
But at 6-foot-3, Adams is a little undersized to play the small forward spot. Sophomore Drew Tennial could be a more natural fit at 6-foot-5 after playing sparingly last season as Pearson’s backup.
“(Harrell) leads by example, he’s the hardest working kid in the program and he’s well respected. So I think you’re going to start there,” Johnson said. “Moving forward from that, you know, we think Shelby Adams has the great makings of a leader. And I think that our guys respect his work ethic … Bringing up the rear is Alonzo Sule. You know, I think that he has the chance to be, by far, the most impactful player that we’ve had at that position since Emani Gant (2013-16).”
There’s no individual player on Texas State’s roster who will single-handedly replace all 27.8 points per game that Pearson and Terry produced last year. But the Bobcats do have multiple players who could benefit from an increased offensive role.
Harrell flashed an ability to score efficiently from nearly everywhere on the floor last season, finishing second on the team with 8.9 points per game and shooting .494% from the field, .446% from deep and .861% from the free throw line. Sule could be the top interior option after posting a team-high .561 field goal percentage and averaging 8.1 points per game. Asberry was a little inconsistent throughout the season but showed he was capable of getting buckets against some of the toughest defenses in the country, like when he scored 12 points against No. 24 Baylor on Nov. 15, 2019.
Johnson plans to make tweaks to the offensive scheme. He noted that Texas State’s spacing on the court wasn’t great at times during last season but that a prolific scorer like Pearson never needed much space to make shots anyway. The team won’t have that same luxury this year.
“We’re gonna be spread out way more, there’s gonna be more opportunity to score in sets,” Asberry said. “There’s way more freedom to be us.”
Johnson does not, however, plan to tweak anything about the defensive scheme that made the Bobcats a headache to play against, allowing a conference-low 64.3 points per game. It’s a big reason why not everyone thinks the maroon and gold will fair too poorly this season — Ken Pomeroy has Texas State ranked 136th overall and third in the Sun Belt, behind just Georgia State (No. 108) and Little Rock (No. 134), with a positive-2.24 adjusted efficiency margin. Small, who racked up 32 steals and 27 blocks as a junior, said he now has his eyes set on the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year trophy.
The Bobcats are set to tip the 2020-21 season off on Wednesday inside Strahan Arena against Mary Hardin-Baylor at 6 p.m. The players said they’ve enjoyed working with Johnson as head coach thus far. Johnson’s time as an assistant made for a smooth transition, but it also means he’s got the same expectations for the program as years past.
To meet those, the team will have to finish much better than 10th in the Sun Belt.
“Coming out of high school, we weren’t all highly recruited or anything like that and we all kind of come from the same place,” Harrell said. “So basketball-wise, we just feel like we get counted out all the time and it was kind of shown this year with the preseason ranking. So we’re excited to kind of show people what we can do.”
