Stansbury talks depth of team, schedule for season ahead

Rick Stansbury talks excitement for the team and upcoming matchups
Published: Sep. 29, 2022 at 11:01 PM CDT

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) - With Thursday marking the official first day of practice for the WKU men’s basketball team, head coach Rick Stansbury had media availability to talk about all things new and improved for the team.

Jamarion Sharp and Jairus Hamilton are back on the hill after entering the transfer portal combined with the return of Jordan Rawls who left to play for Georgia State last season. These key players with the addition of players such as Kentucky transfer Dontaie Allen and Boise State transfer Emmanuel Akot has Stansbury extremely excited to coach this team.

”I don’t like my team, I love my team. Been at this a long time. Had some pretty good teams and some pretty good players, but I haven’t been much more excited anytime than I am about this team,” Stansbury says.

Stansbury also touched on the schedule for the upcoming season.

”Every Power Five team in the country got a call about Western Kentucky one way or the other. Thankful enough we do get a game at South Carolina. We get South Carolina coming back in here next year. We’ve got another return game at Louisville. We open up at Cayman Islands against a really good Akron team that won that league last year, went to the NCAA Tournament, and had UCLA beat in the NCAA Tournament. They basically got the whole team back. If you’re fortunate enough to win that one you got LSU, so we’ve got a really good schedule and a challenging schedule, but I was trying to put this team in a more challenging situation. Two of three more of them if we could. Just couldn’t get them.”

WKU kicks off the season with an exhibition game against the University of Montevallo on November 10th.