Jason Braxton, Athletic Director
None of our players received awards this season. James Lilly was robbed…he should have been on the all-conference team.
Coach Aura accomplished 3 of his goals (winning at least 15 games (we won 21), having no players with academic ineligibility, improving team prestige (improved by 3 up to 54). He didn’t accomplish two others (finishing in the top half in the conference standings and getting to the NCAA tournament…but we did have a very good run in the CIT tournament). In fact, we’d probably have been a one-and-done if we’d gone to the NCAA Tournament, whereas the team’s play in the CIT tourney provided a lot of excitement and enthusiasm within our school and for our fans. Overall it was a pretty successful season and a big step up on how we’d been doing in recent years.
Some really good schools have shown interest in talking with Fred Aura about taking their head coaching jobs, but Fred told me he has no interest in leaving.
In early April we landed our 3rd and final recruit, Josh McFadgon. He’s a 6’1” PG who played JC ball in Whiting, Indiana, so will come to us as a junior next season. He averaged 15.7 ppg, 6.3 apg, 4.8 rpg, 2.0 bpg and 2.8 spg this season. He’s got fantastic passing skills and is an excellent outside shooter. He is a good ball handler, a good scorer, and is very athletic. Most importantly he is a hard worker and hasn’t had injury problems. He’s a 4-star player who was the 93rd ranked recruit.
Josh will join two other 4 star recruits for us: SF Sam Dickens who was the 59th ranked recruit who averaged 19.2 ppg, 4.4 apg, 7.5 rpg, 2.0 bpg, and 3.3 spg in his senior high school season in Noble, Maine and C Courtland Reese who was ranked 84th nationally and averaged 16.4 ppg, 4.4 apg, 8.3 rpg, 3.8 bpg, and 2.6 spg in his high school senior season in Windham, Maine.
Two assistants left to try to get better jobs (1st assistant Kevin Abney wanted a head coaching job and 3rd assistant Robert Wilson was looking to move up in the assistant coaching world). Kevin didn’t get a head coaching job but moved over to Boston University where he will again be 1st assistant. Robert didn’t get picked up by another Division I team, so he took a first assistant coaching job with a Division II team.
We hired two excellent new assistant coaches. David Woodruff will be our 1st Assistant Coach and handle player development/practices. He was previously the head coach at Youngstown State. Rob Rowland will be our 3rd Assistant Coach responsible for scouting. He comes to us from UC Irvine where he was also 3rd assistant.
Fred requested a budget increase. The board authorized a $2,250 increase. I don’t think it was as much as Fred had hoped for, but our board hasn’t been in the habit of increasing budgets. So its that much more he can spend on recruiting this coming season.
That takes care of the 2025-2026 season. I’m already looking forward to next season.