Con Marshall
CHADRON, Neb. – Chadron State men’s basketball will open up its 2024-25 season this weekend, and for the seventh year in a row, they will open by playing two Texas teams from the Lone Star Athletic Conference.
The Eagles will usher in the Chris Francis era with a game against Texas A&M International in Laredo at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, then will face Texas A&M-Kingsville in Kingsville at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Francis, CSC’s new coach, believes his Eagles will be competitive and says it’s time to take the court.
“I’ve been pleased with our players’ work ethic, their talent and their attention to detail during our practices,” Francis said. “We’re kind of sore and beat up, and we’re tired of going against each other. We need to get the season started.”
Francis, who previously had a 176-94 record as the head coach at the University of Science and Arts in Oklahoma, put his new team together in a hurry. He moved to Chadron in mid-July and inherited five players from last year’s roster along with two existing commits.
Within a couple of weeks, Francis had signed seven players from the transfer portal along with the team’s lone freshman, giving him 15 candidates for playing time. All of them remain on the team and are just as eager as their coach to open the season.
“We’ve had good competition in practice,” Francis said. “I won’t be afraid to play any of them. I think we’ll have balanced scoring. We’ll have a big, athletic, physical team.”
Because of the team’s size and athleticism, Francis says the Eagles will be capable of “playing above the rim,” mixing some lobs and dunks into the offense and hopefully dominating the rebounding. He added that while he likes to play a fast-paced game, the team may slow the tempo at times so “the bigs” can do their thing at both ends of the floor.
Francis stated a goal of averaging 20 assists per game, which would be an improvement over last year’s CSC team, which averaged 14 per contest.