Liberty basketball officially opened practice last season as the Flames are preparing for the 2024-25 season.

Coming off an 18-14 campaign, the first for the program without winning at least 20 games since Ritchie McKay’s first year back at Liberty in 2015-16, the Flames have remade their roster.

Seven new faces make up the 16-man roster. Five of those are transfers – Taelon Peter (Arkansas Tech), Isaiah Ihnen (Minnesota), Owen Aquino (JUCO), Josh Smith (Stetson), and Jayvon Maughmer (Cedarville). The Flames also welcome in two new freshmen in Brett Decker and Will Gibson.

“If you watched us play last year, it was evident that we didn’t look maybe like some of the teams we played against from a size and a length and even an athletic standpoint,” said coach McKay. “I think we’ve addressed that, and I think, hopefully, it’ll bode well if we can remain in what’s been a strength of ours and that’s our connection.”

The five transfers all are experienced players with length, athleticism, and success at their previous spots. They are all at least 6’4” and three of them check in at 6’8” or 6’9”, providing Coach McKay with more length than he has had in recent seasons, something that is desperately needed to compete in Conference USA.

“We have a chance to be a lot more versatile,” McKay noted. “We can be big. We can play small ball. We can throw it in the post. We didn’t have much of a post presence on either end last year, no disrespect to the guys that were here, that’s the way I chose to construct our group, but I like our versatility I think it’ll be a strength of ours.”

Josh Smith will miss this upcoming season as he rehabs from an injury suffered from his time at Stetson this past spring, but the other four transfers are all expected to be serious members of this year’s team and compete for not just significant playing time but also starting spots.

While official practices have just started, this group has been together since June working on their chemistry. The season opener against Valparaiso on November 4 is just about a month away, as time to come together as a team is waning.

“The challenge for us is the integration of all the new guys,” McKay said. “I think they’re a group that really wants to please, very, very coachable.”

After qualifying for the NCAA Tournament for three straight seasons from 2019-2021, Liberty has now missed the Tournament three straight years. It’s something McKay and the Flames have their sights set on, returning to the Big Dance.

“Ultimately, what do we want to do? We want to be in the NCAA Tournament, that’s been our program’s expectation now and anything short of that seems like it’s a disappointment,” McKay explained. “We’ve caused that. We like it, that’s a good thing. We embrace it, but we don’t want to be identified by it. We want to run in such a way to win the prize. For me, that would be participation in the NCAA Tournament because then you have a chance to do something exceedingly and abundantly above what we can ask or imagine.”

For Liberty, the path to the NCAA Tournament is to win the CUSA Tournament in March. This has been a one-bid league for quite some time and will likely be so once again this season. Louisiana Tech and Sam Houston return as teams that were at the top of the conference standings last year. Western Kentucky and UTEP are also expected to be in the mix, teams that advanced to the conference title game.

“This team is capable of much,” said McKay of this year’s squad. “It’s easy for me to see that, to feel that, just being around them. Louisiana Tech, Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, those teams are returning a ton, and then there’s some others that I think will have much better seasons than they had last year.”

Liberty got off to a slow start in league play in its first season in CUSA, as the team adjusted to the more physical brand of basketball. The Flames dropped its first three league games, losing on the road to eventual CUSA champ Western Kentucky and Louisiana Tech by a combined four points in that stretch.

The Flames would claw back to an even 5-5 in conference play but would then drop four out of five heading down the stretch. The season would come to an end in the first round of the CUSA Tournament in Huntsville, Alabama, when UTEP closed the game on a 24-3 run to defeat Liberty, 66-57.

With the infusion of talent, size, and athleticism, McKay and the Flames hope to compete for a conference title once again.

“I love our group,” said McKay. “They’re a fabulous collection of people. This group is really fun to coach.”