A new school record for wins, a near-miss at the NESCAC title and a storybook trip to the national Sweet Sixteen is a tough act to follow.
Last year, the men's basketball team put together the best season in the program's history. The Jumbos won 23 games, scored 2,480 points, won two NESCAC Tournament games and won two NCAA Tournament games - all Tufts records.
The team was led by a nucleus of seven players, all of whom averaged over 20 minutes per game. Junior tri-captain Dave Shepherd was a reliable point guard, known for his clutch play in the final minutes, and sophomore Ryan O'Keefe was an athletic guard and a pure shooter. Junior Brian Kumf was a physical small forward and strong rebounder, while senior tri-captain Brian Fitzgerald was a defensive mainstay at power forward. Sophomores Jake Weitzen and Jeremy Black were consistent scorers coming off the bench, giving the team added depth.
Thanks to the return of Fitzgerald, now a graduate student using his final year of eligibility, all six of these Jumbos are set to return for the 2006-07 season. The only missing piece of the puzzle is former tri-captain Dan Martin, the Jumbos' center and go-to inside man who led the team in points, rebounds and blocks.
Six of the Jumbos' seven stars are returning, but the question remains - does this year's team have the depth to return to the NCAA Tournament? Last year's lineup was seven-deep, but coach Bob Sheldon is hoping that number will grow this season.
"We're going to be a lot deeper this year," Sheldon said. "Last year, we started out with 10 or 11, and then we narrowed it down. But this year, we've got some young guys, and we've got some guys coming back, so we hope to play 10 or 11 a game."
The new-look Jumbos include five freshmen and one transfer, sophomore Jon Pierce, who joins the Jumbos from Drew University. But the bulk of the minutes will still go to the returning six-man core.
With Martin gone, the Jumbos will move Kumf to power forward and Fitzgerald to center. Shepherd and O'Keefe will be the Jumbos' top two guards, while Weitzen, who came off the bench last year to finish as the team's second-leading scorer, will move into the starting lineup as a forward. Weitzen, who stands 6'3", is taking the place of the 6'8" Martin in the starting five, and with several players shifting up a spot, the Jumbo lineup is clearly getting smaller.
"I'm worried about it," Sheldon said of the team's size. "Dan only got seven or eight rebounds a game, but he was a presence. He was good for defense, and if we had to get a rebound, we knew he'd get us one. So we're really concentrating on rebounding and playing D."
And while the Jumbo lineup isn't towering, it is physical, with its top seven all weighing in at over 190 lbs.
"If you look down the line, we're pretty thick," Shepherd said. "Our first seven guys - we're not tall, but we're pretty big. The physical part, I'm not worried about. Rebounding could be a problem the early part of the season, though."
The Jumbos, who only set their 2006-07 roster two weeks ago, are just days away from their first test of the season. This weekend Cousens Gym plays host to the Tufts Tip-Off Tournament, as Lasell, Endicott and Rhode Island College come to town Friday night. The Jumbos play Lasell at 7 p.m.
"It'll be good to start the season at home rather than on the road," Shepherd said. "Cousens Gymnasium is one of the best places to play in New England."
The start of the season comes in a hurry for the Jumbos whose roster includes five freshmen, one transfer and two football players (sophomores Aaron Gallant and Az Adhanom) who just finished their fall season at Middlebury on Saturday afternoon.
"It's a little rocky, because right now there's 15 guys on the team, and six of them are brand new," Sheldon said. "That leaves nine guys. They provide the leadership, and they know what we're about. So that helps the transition."
The Jumbos begin the first two months of the season with games against non-conference opponents, which should give them plenty of warm-up time before the NESCAC schedule kicks off Jan. 12 with a game against Amherst at Cousens.
Last year's team won 10 of its first 12 games but ran into trouble once the conference schedule began, losing early on to Bowdoin and Williams. The Jumbos are hoping to out-perform their 6-3 conference record of last season. According to Shepherd, this year's team is looking for nothing less than a conference title.
"If you win the conference tournament, you're automatically into the NCAAs," Shepherd said. "Despite all of our success last year, we didn't actually win anything. We didn't win the NESCAC, and we didn't win a national championship. So that's definitely something we want - to win a title."
The Jumbos made a run at that title last year, but fell short at Amherst, losing in overtime at LeFrak Gymnasium. The Jumbos earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, but that too ended at LeFrak, after Tufts topped Endicott and SUNY-Cortland in the first two rounds. This year the Jumbos are eager to return to the Big Dance.
"Our goal is to get into the NCAAs and then see what happens from there," Sheldon said. "If that means winning the NESCACs to get there, or getting an at-large bid, we don't care. We just want to get back there."
But first thing is first. The season starts Friday, and the first step on the road back to March Madness is a strong November to open the season. And luckily for the Jumbos, that first step will be at Cousens where they finished 10-1 last season.
"We're excited to be able to kick off at home here," Sheldon said. "We have two games here, Friday and Saturday, and we hope to have a good crowd. It should be competitive."
