This story originally appeared in Mile High Sports Magazine. Read the full digital edition.
Consult the various preseason rankings for men’s basketball in the Big Sky Conference and you’ll find the Bears of Northern Colorado ranked anywhere from fourth to eighth. If you look back at last season’s final standings, you’ll see that the Bears finished at No. 8 with a conference record of 7-11 (11-18 overall).
But if you listen closely on campus, there’s a low but confident murmur: The Bears are the Big Sky’s team to beat this season.
It helps to have preseason All-Big Sky point guard Jordan Davis returning – everyone knows he can play. But the Bears have much more than that. Can they really make the leap from No. 8 to No. 1 though?
“Oh yeah. Most definitely,” says Andre Spight, an Arizona State senior transfer who utilized a red-shirt season last year.
“Definitely. One-hundred percent,” says Jonah Radebaugh, now a redshirt sophomore.
Davis averaged 19.3 points and 5.6 assists last season, but Bears head coach Jeff Linder, now in his second campaign at UNC, believes Spight is one of the conference’s top offensive players.
“He can flat-out score,” says Linder of Spight, who averaged 6.6 with Arizona State during the 2015-16 Pac-12 season.
And Radebaugh? He doesn’t have to score – a role he’s happily accepted. The Northglenn High School product can score, but he’s more suited to stop the opposition’s best offensive player. Radebaugh, the returning Big Sky Conference Defensive Player of the Year, held Arizona’s Kadeem Allen (now with the Boston Celtics) to just 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting last November.
“We feel like we’re the best team in the league,” Spight says without hesitation. “We work the hardest. We’re the most-disciplined team in the conference. And we also feel like we’re the most-talented team in the conference.
“If we come up anything short of a championship, it’s a big disappointment.”
Adds Radebaugh: “We have so many dudes who can do so many things. I feel like this is our year to do it.
“Our expectation is to win the conference and win a game in the NCAA Tournament – at least. You know those low-seeded teams that get into the tournament, everybody sleeps on them, they always count them out before the game even comes.”
That’s this year’s team.
Up in Greeley, those in the know will agree.