(St. Louis, MO) – Bob Sunvold believes UMSL’s basketball team has a chance to be good again this season and Saturday night they proved it in an exhibition game with Southern Illinois Carbondale.
Despite losing to the Salukis 71 to 66 they took the Division 1 school to the wire. Harris Stowe was supposed to play SIUC and had to decline, so the Tritons jumped at the chance to play some high level competition.
Sunvold is in his first year as the Head Coach at UMSL. When Steve Tappmeyer resigned last spring, Athletic Director Lori Flanagan acted quickly in hiring the veteran coach. Sunvold has won over 100 college games, having coached at Central Missouri and UMKC. He was a long time assistant with Norm Stewart at Missouri, Charlie Spoonhour at Missouri State and recently with Charlie’s son Jay at Eastern Illinois.
One of the cues of the off-season was the signing of Femi John as a key recruit. Coach Sunvold told me John still has some adjustments to make.
Apparently John doesn’t have as many things to work out as Sunvold thought. The McCluer North graduate and former Saint Louis University player scored 22 points, grabbed six rebounds and handed out three assists in the Tritons’ loss to the Salukis.
It is just the latest strong performance by a Great Lakes Valley team against Division 1 competition. McKendree played a great first half against Illinois and Drury led Duke by four points at the half of their recent exhibition and Lewis defeated the MVC’s Loyola-Chicago! The GLVC will continue to make noise on a the national level this season.
The Tritons open their season with a two day, two game event in Michigan November 9th and 10th.
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As we near the closing of the portal window, we've reached 1900. Some of them never to play college basketball again, earn a college degree and some to play at a much lower level than they did last season.
I guess we'll be seeing this in a @RacersHoops uniform this year. Glad AJ is staying in the @ValleyHoops.
