UMD Men’s Hoops Entering New Era, Bulldog Women Building Off Experience

Both the men and the women tip-off their seasons on Friday.

DULUTH, Minn.- The start of a new UMD men’s and women’s basketball season will begin on Friday night.

On the men’s side, for the first time since the 2018-2019 season, the Bulldogs won’t have a Drew Blair, Jack Middleton, Joshua Brown, Austin Andrews, or Charlie Katona on their roster.

Essentially a new era of UMD men’s hoops, which excites head coach Justin Wieck, who will be entering his 8th season leading the Bulldogs.

“Those guys left their mark big time obviously. But in college sports, you have to take that next jump with the guys here. It’s kind of that new, fresh, excitement, don’t quite really know what to expect when that ball gets jumped up on Friday. But these guys have done a great job preparing for it. They put in a lot of work over the last 3-4 years. I’m excited for them to get their moment to see where they stand and hopefully continue on this tradition in our program, hopefully take it to newer heights,” said Wieck.

UMD does return Caleb Siwek, Mattie Thompson, and Nick Katona. Those three plus the rest of the Bulldogs hit the floor Friday against East Central University.

So as the Bulldog men get a little younger, the Bulldog women on the other end are getting a little bit older.

Last season, players like Claire Bjorge, Maria Counts, and Vanessa Bickford all stepped into bigger roles.

It may have not been the type of year that the team had hoped for as they finished with a 10-18 overall record.

But, head coach Mandy Pearson could feel her team starting to click late and that’s only meant good things for the year ahead.

“It was fun because our younger players made huge improvements throughout the year last year. Then we had some other players, who were thrown into roles that they weren’t used to. So, hopefully we can just build off of that. It was awesome, the last two weeks I thought we finally played really really well. Defensively, things started to click. That has carried into our preseason and hopefully we just keep getting better and better this year,” said Pearson.

UMD takes on Northwestern Oklahoma State on Friday at 5:30 PM.