Bears optimistic for new season

Bridgewater State College men's basketball team appears to be a powerful force as eleven players return this season. The Bears will look for leadership from senior center Derek Thompson and junior guard Tom Cuddihy, who are this year's team captains.

Gone from last year is 1000 point scorer Dave Rukstalis, leading bench scorer Cliff Furtado, and last year's MASCAC leading rebounder, Tyler Lang. With these changes Coach Joe Farroba looks for new faces to start on offense.

"With the depth of players that we have I hope that we can find replacements for Ruckstalis, Furtado, and Lang," said Farroba.

Starting at the point guard position for the Bears will be senior KC Granfield.

Farroba said, "KC is very good at spreading the ball around and plays solid defensive game."

Granfield did not play in the winter because of a season ending knee injury last fall.

Starting at the forward positions for the Bears will be senior Adam Rose and sophomore Bryan Grozier. Rose played in 27 games for the Bears and came off the bench in 21 of them. Grozier played in limited duty as a freshman coming off the bench in 16 games.

"Last year Adam Rose had a great year coming off the bench," said Farroba. "We hope that by giving Grozier the opportunity to start that we can get some quality minutes out of him. With Rose we think he can step in and fill the gap left by Rukstalis."

Off the bench, the team will look to senior guards Damian Shakespeare and Ryan Devereaux. Shakespeare gained experience last season when he was called on to help a point guard corps who lost three starters to injury last year. Devereaux may be called on to come off the bench as the scorer. He could replace the void that has been left by Furtado.

Also coming off the bench, look for sophomore forward Roland Millien to fill the gap left by Lang and Rukstalis in rebounding. Millien will come into the game when either Thompson and/or Grozier are not on the floor. Junior forward Dwayne Wilkerson will also be coming off the bench to fill the same role.

"It's too early to determine who is going to fill the gaps that we are missing from last year," said Farroba. "But we hope over the next few games that we can try and figure that out. It doesn't matter who starts for us; it's who finishes."

After two back-to-back scrimmages this past weekend the Bears still have lots of work to do according to Farroba.

"I thought we gave up too many three point shots," said Farroba. "We tried lots of combinations, and for a couple moments we looked really good out there, we need to try and make this happen over a long period of time. But then you can never base a team's season on a couple of scrimmages."

To begin the season the Bears will be hosting their own tournament, the Dominos Tip-Off Classic. The team will be playing St Joseph's College in the first game of the opening round.

"We don't really know too much about St. Joseph's," said Farroba. "But with proper studying of the game tape I'm sure we will be able figure out a way to exploit their man-to-man defense."

The winner of Bridgewater's game takes on the winner of the Salve Regina-Maine Machias game. In the last five years the Bears are 8-2 in tip-off tournament games.

Bridgewater begins the tournament at 8 p.m. on Friday. The consolation game will be played at 1 p.m. on Saturday. The championship game will be played at 3 p.m.