By MATT PIKE
The Northwest Missouri State men's basketball team hopes to make another jump this season under third year head coach Matt Keeley after making the MIAA tournament last season for the first time since the 2023 season.
Since Keeley took over the program after the departure of Bearcats Hall of Famer Ben McCollum, Northwest has gone 21-28, with a 12-26 record in conference play. After a last place finish in 2024, the Bearcats were 10th in the MIAA last season, losing in the quarterfinal round of the MIAA tournament to Missouri Southern.
Keeley says making a bigger step in year three is something every Bearcat fan is hoping to see and says it's just working to get better a day at a time.
"Yesterday (Monday) was the first official practice and when we're really good on offense, I'm worried about are we any good defensively against ourselves, and vice versa, if we get a bunch of stops, I'm like man can we ever score," Keeley tells reporters. "Time will tell with that, but I think the anchors for us are transition offense, team defense, and just having a grit to rebounding."
Northwest returns seven players from last year's team but will need to replace some scoring after losing Royce Williams, Aiden Gair, and Matthew Mayes the team's top three scorers from last season. Keeley though, sees players that can fill that void.
"Robby Garcia and Booker Scheierman, Larens (Walters) and Presley (Ibeh) are two guys that return for us that also played quite a bit last year to go along with some proven transfers at the Division II level," Keeley explains. "And then you never know, we've got some winners that were freshman, two of our four freshmen are state champions, and so there's some pedigree to that and so looking forward to these early season practices to see how it all plays out."
Garcia, a freshman last season, started 10 games and played in all but one game all season. In his freshman campaign, Garcia averaged nearly 10 points a game and shot almost 40% from three on his way to scoring 285 points and pulling down 109 rebounds.
Garcia says he's worked during the offseason to become a scoring force in year two for Northwest.
"The biggest thing I worked on this summer was my body, I was probably around 230 last year which was pretty heavy for me and I think I'm down to 215 now, so just that athleticism part of it," Garcia says. "And then obviously that handle, I didn't really get to showcase a lot of that last year, obviously we had guys like Aiden and Royce that had to kind of fill in our scoring for us, and for me especially going into year two it's been a big focus of mine to kind of be that scoring force we're going to have to have."
"And I know we're going to have to have somebody on our team like that, so hopefully I can step up and kind of fill into that role that those guys left."
The Bearcats team also features the final bridge between the McCollum era and the Keeley era in forward Trey Moala. Moala was third on the team in rebounds last season, scoring just over six points a game.
Being the veteran leader of this team, Moala says he's focused on helping the guys along.
"New guys, guys that have transferred in, freshman for sure, they always need guidance," Moala says. "So, encouraging those guys to ask questions but also just throwing stuff out there whenever I can."
Northwest was picked to finish 10th again this season by both the MIAA coaches and media. The Bearcats open the season on November 9th at home hosting William Jewell.
Interviews
Head Coach Matt Keeley
Trey Moala
Robby Garcia
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