Men’s basketball at home Friday
The Monmouth College winter sports season gets underway the first week of November as the men’s basketball team hosts Wisconsin-Whitewater on Friday, Nov 5. It will be the first basketball game played on campus since February 2020 and the first for either Monmouth team since the women played in the NCAA Tournament in March 2020.
A lot has changed since the last time both teams took the court at Glennie Gymnasium. The women have a different head coach, while the men lost all five starters to two graduating classes.
Entering his 10th season as the Scots’ men’s basketball coach, Todd Skrivseth has a roster of 22 players – eight seniors, four juniors, four sophomores and six freshmen. That means that 10 players have yet to experience a Division III game as a player.
The 2019-20 men’s team went 14-11 overall, 9-9 in conference play. The top eight scorers from that team are gone, and no one on the current roster has started a Scots game since Jonathan Oradiegwu and Brandon Wheeler each made one in 2018-19.
Only two returning players – Oradiegwu and Wheeler – have posted games with at least eight points.
In 2019-20, Oradiegwu played in 21 of the season’s 25 contests, and he is the top returning scorer at 3.3 points per game. Jordan Metcalf played in five games and scored five points, while Briar Greenman and Amyas Njoku saw action in three games, and Joseph Oradiegwu played in one game.
Wheeler, who missed the 2019-20 season, averaged 3.4 points per game in 2018-19.
For the women’s team, Megan Jones is the new head coach, succeeding Kyle Wilson, who left the coaching profession last spring. Jones is a first-time head coach with assistant coaching experience at Luther College and playing experience at Loras College. She is a native of Colfax, Illinois, and played high school ball at Ridgeview.
The Scots went 21-7 in 2019-20, with a 14-4 Midwest Conference record. They beat Cornell in the conference tournament semifinals, then Ripon in the championship game before losing to No. 5 Wartburg in the NCAA tournament. Monmouth lost their top three scorers from that team, including MWC Player of the Year Becca Gallis.
Back on the roster, however, are the next four-leading scorers, who started all 28 games in 2019-20. Kaitlyn Osmulski made 42 3-pointers, averaged 7.8 points and 3.4 rebounds while making 90.4 percent of her free throws, a school record. Jordan Kintigh also started every game and averaged 5.8 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. Tarae Warner averaged 6.5 points per game and shot 42.9 percent from beyond the arc. Josie Morgan scored 5.8 points per game and shot 30.6 percent from distance. Zoie Wall also saw action in 22 games and averaged 2.1 points per game.
The Scots have two freshmen, both of whom are involved in fall spots: Anna Caster plays soccer, and Delaney Scheidenhelm plays volleyball. Junior Jadyn Mitchell scored 11.8 points per game at Eureka College in 2019-20 before transferring to Monmouth.
The women open the season on the road before their first home game on Saturday, Nov. 13, against Buena Vista. That contest is scheduled for a 3 p.m. tipoff, right after the Turkey Bowl. The indoor track and field season begins in January with a home meet on Jan. 15. Meanwhile, the swimming season, which overlaps fall and winter, started with a win on Oct. 15 against Knox. The next home meet is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Nov. 13.
