As practice officially begins for both teams, the University of Charleston and West Virginia State men's basketball squads are hoping for better living through chemistry.
Both the Golden Eagles and Yellow Jackets are trying to climb higher than last season's respective finishes - 19-10 for UC and 6-25 for State. For both UC coach Dwaine Osborne and State coach Bryan Poore, that meant getting a little more conventional when it came to restocking their rosters.
That meant that bringing in transfers with just one year of eligibility, a recruiting strategy teams at all levels of college basketball use, became rare. When the time limit to meld those short-term players into the program is so small, chemistry sometimes becomes an issue.
Osborne had four one-year players on last season's roster - Deandre Leatherwood from Morehead State, Chris Evans from Sacred Heart, Vincent Dillard from the University of Texas-Arlington and Octavius Green from Lamar.
"Those guys hadn't been around long enough to know exactly how I want things done," Osborne said. "They don't know each other, they don't know anybody else. I put them in a tough spot for bringing them in for that one year."
And if a basketball program continues that strategy for too long, the roster turnover becomes constant and building cohesiveness becomes more difficult. Poore said part of the reason he moved toward signing players for the long haul was too much of that turnover in previous seasons.
"I feel like that's kind of where we were at the last couple of years and I feel like that's what kind of took us out," Poore said.
So both the Golden Eagles and Yellow Jackets focused their recruiting efforts for this season on players whose impact could be felt for more than one slate of games.
"We had a couple of one-year guys we could have taken that could have been impactful," Osborne said. "But anytime we got into that situation, we tried to be very cautious, on top of the fact that we tried to say if we got a guy who can be really impactful in one year, and a guy who's close but not quite, we went with the two-year guy or three-year guy."
Among the players Charleston has for this season are Justin Coleman, a 6-foot-7 junior forward from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College who had been headed to Middle Tennessee before changing course and heading to UC, and Jaylen Hinton, a 6-2 sophomore point guard who transferred from Georgia State. Hinton enrolled in January and sat out the semester to get comfortable in the Golden Eagles' system, and Osborne said he and junior point guard Cameron Dozier have done well in handling point guard duties.
Those newcomers, along with the rest of a large slate of first-year Golden Eagles, should help fortify the areas where Osborne felt the team needed to improve the most - versatility and 3-point shooting. Osborne is hopeful the group will mesh with established UC players like seniors Tino diTrapano, Aleksander Kesic and Jevonte Hughes.
"I feel really good about it," Osborne said. "I think a lot of that stuff doesn't necessarily start with the new guys. I think a lot of that comes from the leadership - Tino, Aleks, Jevonte - those guys have to help facilitate that.
"Last year, I felt like we had some guys who were a little taxing to deal with," he added. "They weren't bad kids, but a little bit more high-maintenance. The year before last, when we won a championship, I felt we were more low-maintenance. This year, it's a little more like the championship team."
Poore brought in one one-year player, 6-7 forward Ronald Whaley, a former Virginia Union Panther. The rest of the incoming class are freshmen like Baltimore's Frank Webb and Brent Bauer of Xenia, Ohio, or junior college players like 6-2 guard Robert Fomby from Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio and 6-6 guard Keith Harris from Monroe College in New York.
They'll join the Yellow Jackets' leading scorer, senior Markee Mazyck, who averaged 20.7 points last year. Poore said Mazyck almost had to be that prolific a scorer for State to compete, but this year's roster should help alleviate some of that stress.
This year's roster also should help build the continuity Poore had sought.
"The more time these kids are around you, around your system and around each other, the stronger relationship they build with all those things," he said. "And the more guys have a stronger relationship with the program and want to win for the program, the better off I think we all are."
Poore believes this group of Yellow Jackets has the grit he thought was lacking in previous years, and that was another missing ingredient that led to the team's recent struggles.
"I like to tell our guys we need some dogs," Poore said. "We need some guys who'll go get it, who'll go after the ball, go guard the toughest players, get a tough rebound in traffic. We didn't have enough of those guys and I really felt like we've added some toughness to our team as well."