After a wild offseason, a new season has begun for Omaha Men’s Basketball. Omaha lost many players from the transfer portal including their lead scorer from last season Frankie Fidler. Omaha will rely on Tony Osburn who was injured part of last season who can be a hot shooter as well as North Dakota State transfer Lance Waddles. Other players include Marquel Sutton, the Junior College Player of the Year last season from Hutchinson Community College transfer Kamryn Thomas, and North Dakota State transfer Joshua Streit in the starting five. The players off the bench to watch are JJ White, Ja’Sean Glover who got cleared to play in the middle of summer after missing most of last season with an injury, Grant Stubblefield, and Khamani Cooper. This makes up the current nine man rotation Omaha will have this season Omaha also has three international players on the roster which is a record for this program. These players could potentially be in the rotation sometime this season. They include Valentino Simon from the Bahamas, Issac Ondekane from the Congo and a transfer from Lindenwood, and Pablo Soumare from the Senegal.
Omaha starts the season on Monday November 4th against Mid American Christian University, an NAIA school from Oklahoma where Chris Crutchfield used to coach at. They also play at Stetson on Thursday November 7th finishing a home and home series where Omaha won that game. Some notable non conference games include at Minnesota November 9th, at UNLV November 14th, and at Iowa State December 15th.
The Summit League has served as the minor league of NCAA Basketball as many players start out in mid major conferences, then go on to play power 5 ball including blue blood teams. This league will once again look very different with only Kansas City keeping their roster from last season which is why many people think they will win the Summit League. I personally think it will be either them or South Dakota State winning the Summit League followed by St Thomas. Many people will think I am crazy with this prediction but I believe Omaha will finish 4th in the Summit League out of nine teams as opposed to 7th 8th or last like many other people. Last season I had Omaha finishing 6th and they were the six seed in the Summit League Tournament. Be ready Reach the Summit Podcasters on the Twitter chat to fire the cannons at me all season long on this and quit calling Omaha as “Burnt Toast!!!”