The Winona State University’s men’s basketball team finished their 2023-24 Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC) journey by reaching the semifinals. They lost to the University of Minnesota, Duluth, who are nationally ranked. Before that, they defeated Northern State University and Minnesota State University, Moorhead. They finished their NSIC season with 14 conference match wins and 19 overall wins.
After having three of their starting players graduate, Winona State had a big task to rebuild the team this season. The impact of such was not seen early in the matches, but after just a few, their opponents began to see the weaknesses that plagued the team.
Where Winona State used to have three players who were always ready to score they now depended on only one. One player, Connor Dillon, was a particularly standout scorer but was quickly identified as such and remained consistently guarded by two or more opposing players.
Winona State attempted to find different scoring options for them. Connor Drew and Declan Dillon managed to gain the spotlight for some of the matches, but they were unfortunately not regular in their performances. They tried out players like Drew Adams and Devon Fielding, but the coach was not satisfied with the result. The situation took a sweet turn for them after Olumide Adelodun recovered from his injury.
Adelodun was a game-changer as he was not the focus of the other teams before this season. Brock Voigt also had good results, quickly proving himself as a threat to the other teams on the court.
“I was pretty happy with this year’s performance,” Adelodun said. “At the start of the year not a lot of people thought we were going to be as good as we were.”
This team has been strong defensively since the start of the season. Carson Arenz, D. Dillon, and C. Drew were the backbone of the team and helped the attacking players move forward with their attacks.
The Warriors defeated Northern State University at 95-65 in a quarterfinal match. This game displayed their ability and is a hopeful indication of how they will perform in the future. They faced Northern State three games earlier where they finished 80-79 with a last-minute point by C. Dillon that saved the match for them.
“I will never forget our comeback win at Northern State when we were in desperation to continue to keep winning,” C. Dillon said.
This potential champion team already had four players graduating this year. This means that the coaching panel once again is facing the challenge of filling the previous Warriors spots. On top of this stressor, head coach Todd Eisner mentioned that there might be a transfer that could have the Warriors losing some of their roster as well. Still, they have begun recruiting.
“We are looking for players. I would guess most of them will be transfers that we add to the program,” Coach Eisner said. “But we just don’t know where we’re at with that yet. We’re working on it right now.”
C. Dillon ensured that he would be graduating and would not be on the team next season. This will be quite the loss for the team and a big spot to fill. C. Dillon was the highest scorer for the team with 670 points and an average of 21.6 per match.
Coach Eisner has decided to focus on the teams defensive tactics in their practics. As the Warriors have a record of showing better skills as the season goes on, it might bring out a new set of starters next year as well.
