When Mark Montgomery took the head coaching job in April, the Titans men’s basketball program was the lowest it had ever been in its 119 seasons. The team won just one game in the prior season which brought on the decision to end the Mike Davis era, which offered so much promise, but a lack of consistency.
For Montgomery, it’s too early to determine a level of consistency, but what he has done is nothing short of spectacular. The team features 10 new players and currently sits at 5-5 with a win over the league’s preseason No. 1 Purdue Fort Wayne. Now, this might just seem like the current state of college basketball, but that’s only the case if you have extensive resources and NIL, something the Titans don’t have.
Seven of the players are freshman, five of them true which all contribute, something almost unheard of in all of college athletics in the post COVID era. Three of them are transfers, one in Aquinas (NAIA) transfer Jared Larry, a unicorn of a player as a 6-foot-6 ball handler and scorer. Averaging 9 points and 4 rebounds per game, the sky is the limit for Larry in terms of what role he will play as a player at this level, but in a brutal blow he will miss the rest of the season with a torn ACL suffered in the Eastern Michigan game in November
The other two transfers (both from Eastern Michigan) in Orlando Lovejoy and Legend Geeter have picked up the slack even more than they already were, with Geeter posting back-to-back career highs including a game–winning 3 against PFW to give him 22 points and 9 rebounds. Lovejoy has been exactly what the team has needed from him, averaging 17 points and 6 assists in the last six games. If he plays at a similar clip, he will finish with the highest average of assists of any Titan since the turn of the century.
These aren’t just lucky hits in the portal either. Lovejoy grew up around Calihan Hall with many Titan greats and even joked that he “knew campus better than Coach Monty when he took the job.” Geeter, a River Rouge native was coached by LeMonta Stone, an assistant on the UDM staff, at River Rouge High School.
Further credit to Coach Montgomery goes for not completely clearing the house as well. When Jayden Stone and Mark Tankersley left the program and entered the portal, he could have taken everyone else as a wash which on paper, seemed like it may be. But instead he didn’t and kept both Emmanuel Kuac and Mak Manciel, two players who were plagued with injuries both during their time as Titans and their college career. Kuac (23) and Manciel (22) stepped up as leaders when this team didn’t have one, and it paid off for them both. Kuac is averaging career–highs across the board, and Manciel had a career-high of 30 before injuring his ankle in the next game to be sidelined indefinitely.
Where this team will go is unknown and they’ve got a way to go, but Montgomery is cookin’ so the question becomes, when does Metro Detroit become hungry to support?
