The Southwest Men's Basketball team enters the 2025-26 season trying to carry over what it built last season when the Bears went 17-13 and qualified for the Region 23 tournament.
In order to maintain the success, head coach Corey Schmidt will have a mostly new roster at his disposal.
Of his 14 players, only three from the 2024-25 squad have returned. Despite this, Schmidt said that he is looking forward to the upcoming season.
"I'm just really excited, we have a really talented group," Schmidt said. "We have a chance to do a lot of big things on the court, we just have to put it all together. We have showed some flashes in our jamborees. We just need to get more consistent and clean some things up but I'm excited about the potential in this group."
The three returners are Robert Flantroy, Jaylen Haliburton and Jay Kennedy, with Flantroy and Haliburton playing important roles last season. Flantroy averaged 6.0 points and 3.0 rebounds per game while Haliburton averaged 8.2 points per game and finished the season with 32 steals.
Schmidt knows that it is going to be a bit of a transition for his team as since it is mostly new, they will have to learn how to cooperate with each other on the court.
"That's one of the biggest adjustments on this level in any year, with this only being a two-year program," Schmidt said. "You never really have a ton of returners and this year we only have three and only two played a heavy role last season. We've got a lot of new faces and a lot of guys who have to learn how to play with each other, learn the standards and what our program is. That's the adjustment every year and that is the fun part of the job."
Among the new faces for the Bears is a pair that's very familiar with the conference in Dawson Knox and Courterius Scott, who are both former Co-Lin Wolves.
Joining them are guards Brian Foxworth, Jujuan Nettles and Ashton Powell along with forwards Chidid Nwosu, Taviyun Johnson, Leano Rolle, Jon Jackson and Andre Ngomabie.
One aspect that stands out about Schmidt's team this year is its size, with multiple players at lead 6-5 or taller.
"Once you start building out your roster and seeing how things are going, you kind of start to go certain directions or follow what you feel like is going to work best," he said. "Every year, the roster is going to be a little different, you can have a lot of shooting, you can have a lot of speed, you can have a lot of strength, you can have a lot of size, you can have a lot of athleticism. You can go a lot of different directions and sometimes you can be balanced across the floor. We like the potential of having bigger lineups and more length and height out there on the court."
Returning on the sidelines with Schmidt this season is Antonio Cowart, who is entering his third season as an assistant coach. Joining the Bears are a pair of newcomers in lead assistant Nick Couluris and Brenton Jones.
The Bears open the 2025 season on Friday facing Tallahassee State College at 5 p.m. as part of the Chipola Classic.
