Fighting Scots ready to rebound from recent disappointments

Release Date: November 17, 2004

MONMOUTH, Ill. — The Monmouth College men’s basketball team was a bit of an enigma last season. Veteran coach Terry Glasgow likely spent many long nights pondering how his Fighting Scots could defeat Midwest Conference champion Lawrence University – a team that was, in Glasgow’s words, “a jump shot away from the national championship” – but lose by 32 points to the league’s last-place team, Beloit.

“The long and short of it is we weren’t consistent,” said Glasgow, who will take a 439-278 record into his 33rd year on the Fighting Scots’ bench. “We weren’t consistent from half-to-half, let alone game-to-game. We have not been very pleased with the last two years of Monmouth College basketball.”

Although the Scots rallied slightly from a 5-18, 2-14 season in 2002-03 to go 9-14 overall last year and 4-12 in the MWC, Glasgow approached the recruiting season vigorously, knowing much was needed to make Monmouth a contender again.

“We had to analyze the cause and do something about it,” he said. “We realized we weren’t good enough defensively, especially from a quickness standpoint. With our recruiting class, we think we’ve addressed that dramatically. We also wanted to recruit a couple of kids who could be bona fide inside scorers, and we wanted to bring more competition to practice.”

Glasgow feels the Scots made tremendous off-season strides, and he now has a solid core of five returners, four transfer students and five freshmen. Judging by the first 25 practices and the team’s solid performance in an exhibition game at Central Missouri State University – midway through the second half the Scots trailed by just four points against their Division II hosts – Glasgow feels those strides will show when the Scots start their season for real on Nov. 22 at MacMurray College.

“We now go 10- or 12- or even 14-deep without a noticeable dropoff in talent,” he said.

If the Scots laced them up today against the Highlanders, Glasgow said that MC’s lone all-conference returnee, senior Travis Miller, who would be joined in the top five by junior guard Anthony Beaird, senior center Jason Murren and transfer point guard Chris Hebeler, with freshman Joe Terwelp winning a tight battle with junior Tucker Blaser at power forward.

Miller, who had only the second triple-double in school history last year, brings an all-around game to the table. He led Monmouth in assists (3.2) and rebounds (6.8) last season while scoring 13.7 points per game.

Beaird averaged 13.5 points, and he led the team with 70 three-pointers, making 8-of-12 bombs on his way to a career-high 34 points in a season-ending win over Knox. Glasgow called him “one of the purest, if not the purest shooter in this league. He’s got great basketball instincts. All he needs is a nanosecond, and it’s three.”

Rounding out the backcourt is Hebeler, a transfer from Benedictine University, who netted 22 points in the CMSU exhibition.

“He’s a great addition,” said Glasgow. “At times, when Anthony’s not in, we can have three point guards in the lineup with him, Travis and Caleb Bennett.”

Bennett, who prepped at Avon, was called “pound-for-pound, one of the toughest kids we’ve had here in years.”

A pair of shooting guards round out the Scots’ backcourt possibilities. “Terrific scorer” Jim Dibble, a junior who led Monmouth to an impressive win over Ripon with an 18-point effort, and freshman Blaise Rogers, who prepped at Midwest Central, both figure to be in the rotation.

In the frontcourt, Glasgow said he was “really encouraged” by Murren’s play at CMSU, as “he was active in denying the post and rebounded as well as he ever has. He’s stepped his energy up.”

Murren will eventually be challenged for a starting spot by transfer David Price, a cousin of former MC great Juan Mitchell. One week into practice, the 6-foot-6 junior sprained his ankle, and he did not see the court against CMSU or in Monmouth’s scrimmage with Westminster College.

At the No. 4 spot, Glasgow says Terwelp, who led all scorers at the Class A state tourney last year while playing for Quincy Notre Dame, has the slight edge over Blaser because of his offensive abilities. It’s hard to keep Blaser and his ceaseless energy off the court, though, and the Rockridge product netted 5.5 points per game for Monmouth last year in 13 contests.

Other names to watch for the Scots include transfer forward Tim Bowen, who “will get some minutes once the season starts”; 6-5 freshman forward Andy Moore, a “pleasant surprise” out of Ottawa; Olympic Conference products Wes Wrage of Farmington and Chris Walker of Knoxville; football players Kyle Cantwell and Matt Hammer, who are just getting back into the basketball groove after Monmouth’s successful gridiron season; and freshmen point guard apprentices Dan Vashinko of Montini and Scott Scholten of Elk Grove Village.

Rounding out the roster are senior Kyle Wilhelm, junior Mike Oblinger, junior transfer Jack Nelson, sophomores Josh Reschke, Kevin Conrad, Chase Ruby and Tyler Gumm and freshmen Grant Lamsargis (Hillsboro), Jesse Hackett (Midwest Central) and Brett Peurach (Bloomfield Hills, Mich.).

When sizing up the MWC race, “the first word out of your mouth has to be Lawrence,” said Glasgow. A year ago, despite their loss to Monmouth, the Vikings reached the Elite Eight, losing by a point in the quarterfinals to UW-Stevens Point, which went on to win the national title.

“They might be as good a team as we’ve had in this league,” Glasgow said of Lawrence, which earned a No. 5 national ranking in the preseason. “They’re head-and-shoulders above the rest right now. I see a battle between two or three teams for second, including Carroll, Knox and Lake Forest.”

Although Monmouth, as always, will play the Prairie Fore twice (Jan. 8 in Galesburg and Feb. 19 at Glennie Gym), the Scots have caught a break this season and will only meet Lawrence and Carroll once apiece.

For various reasons, Glasgow also believes that Grinnell, St. Norbert, Ripon and Illinois College will factor in the race, and the only team he omitted, Beloit, has arguably the league’s best scorer in Josh Hinz.

“It’s hard to sit here and predict us in the race, but I’ll tell you what, we’ll be in there,” said Glasgow. “We had to get some help in the areas of depth, overall quickness and a competitive mindset, and we’ve done that.”

Basketball Homepage