The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP) men’s
basketball team has a new look this season.

After losing their top two scorers from last year’s team
that finished 14-12, the Pointers brought in four transfers and four freshmen
to join the 12 players returning from a year ago, when they tied for fifth in
the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) and missed the NCAA
Division III Tournament for the first time since the 2005-06 season.

UWSP opened this season with a 63-55 loss at St. Olaf (Minn.) Tuesday, Nov. 15,
and will head to Owings Mills, Md., this weekend
to face second-ranked Christopher Newport (Va.) at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, and Lynchburg (Va.) at 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19, as part of the Hoopsville National
Invitational Classic at Stevenson
University.

“Our hope was that all through the spring, summer and then
this fall, that our guys are going to play with that chip on their shoulder, that
they’re really disappointed,” said UWSP men’s basketball head coach Bob
Semling. “You can talk about the fact that, ‘we didn’t come here to not win a
WIAC Title or to not make the NCAA field, we all came here because we wanted to
be in the NCAA Tournament all four years, and each year do something
significant.’

“But we have to back it up, and it starts on the practice
floor, learning how Championship teams go about their business every day in
practice, and we’re still working on that,” he said. “That’s still a work in
progress.”

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