Kincaid University's basketball program has spent most of the past decade rebuilding around whichever players stayed healthy long enough to finish a season. This year, for the first time in coach Dominic Reyes's tenure, almost nobody left.
Kincaid returns four starters from a team that finished 19-8 last season and advanced to the conference tournament semifinal for the first time in ten years, a run that ended one win short of the program’s first championship-game appearance since Reyes was hired. Senior guard Malik Sorensen, who averaged 16.4 points and 5.1 assists last season, said the experience of that semifinal loss has shaped how the team has approached the offseason. “We were right there, and it came down to a couple of possessions we didn’t execute,” Sorensen said. “Everybody who was in that locker room after that game came back this year, which almost never happens at this level.”
Continuity in a program built on turnover
Reyes said Division III programs like Kincaid’s typically lose a meaningful chunk of a roster every offseason to graduation, transfer or simply students deciding to prioritize academics over athletics in their final years, making this season’s near-total continuity unusual. Forward Caleb Whitmore, who led the team in rebounding last season as a junior, said the returning group has spent the offseason working out together far more than in previous years. “Normally by this point in August half the team you played with in March has scattered for internships or just isn’t playing anymore,” Whitmore said. “This year it felt like everybody showed up in September already knowing exactly what we were trying to build on.”
The Ospreys’ rotation gets a boost from sophomore guard Trevor Nash, who Reyes said earned significant minutes late last season after an injury to a since-graduated senior forced him into the lineup earlier than planned. “Trevor got thrown into real minutes as a freshman in games that mattered, which is not usually how it works here,” Reyes said. “He’s a year further along than most sophomores because of how last season played out, and that’s part of why I think this team is deeper than anything I’ve coached at Kincaid.”
We’re not going to talk about a championship out loud until we’re actually playing for one. But I’ll say this: last year taught this group exactly how close good enough is to not good enough, and I don’t think they’ve forgotten a single possession from that semifinal.
Dominic Reyes, Head Coach, Kincaid Ospreys
A tougher nonconference schedule
Reyes said the athletic department deliberately scheduled a harder slate of nonconference opponents this season, betting that last year’s tournament run would make the Ospreys a more attractive opponent for other regional programs looking to boost their own schedules. Kincaid opens with three of its first five games against teams that made their own conference tournaments last year, a departure from a nonconference schedule that Reyes acknowledged had sometimes been built around securing early wins rather than testing the roster.
“If we want to be the kind of program that gets taken seriously in November, we have to play games in November that matter,” Reyes said. “I’d rather find out in December what we need to fix than find out in the conference tournament again.” Sorensen said the tougher schedule has changed how practices feel compared to previous preseasons. “Coach isn’t easing us in this year,” he said. “We’re basically simulating conference-tournament pressure in October.”
Bigger crowds, at least for the biggest games
The program’s on-campus arena seats just under 1,200, and Reyes said Kincaid’s athletic department will again move several of the season’s marquee games, including a rivalry matchup in January, to the larger Anchor Arena downtown, a practice the school adopted last year after the semifinal run drew crowds beyond the home gym’s capacity. Whitmore said the players have noticed the difference. “Playing downtown in front of a real crowd is a completely different experience than our home gym,” he said. “It’s still Division III, but for one night it feels like something bigger, and I think that’s part of why alumni have started showing up again.”
Kincaid opens its season on the road this week before its home opener at the on-campus arena later in the month. Reyes said he has not settled on a starting lineup beyond Sorensen and Whitmore, saying he wants to see how the team’s depth performs against real competition before locking in a rotation. “I have more options than I’ve ever had here,” he said. “That’s a good problem, but it’s still a problem I have to solve before conference play starts.”
Reyes said the program has also used the offseason to formalize a partnership with Kincaid’s exercise science department, giving players access to biomechanical analysis of their shooting mechanics that had previously only been available informally through individual faculty relationships. Nash said the sessions have already changed small details in his shot. “They showed me film of my release point next to data from my freshman year, and it turns out I’d developed a hitch under pressure that I had no idea was there,” Nash said. “Fixing something like that is the kind of marginal improvement that probably doesn’t show up until conference play, when every possession matters more.”
Whitmore said the team has set an internal goal of finishing the regular season ranked among the conference’s top three seeds, which would guarantee a first-round bye in the conference tournament, a scheduling advantage the Ospreys did not have last year when they had to win three tournament games in three days to reach the semifinal. “Nobody’s said the word championship out loud in this locker room yet,” Whitmore said. “But everybody knows that bye is the difference between having something left in the tank for a title game and playing your fourth game in four days against a team that’s rested.”