New Faces Step Up for Men's Basketball Media Day
- Natalie Zona
- 42 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Dean athletics is stepping up this year in all aspects of what they are doing behind the scenes. One of these improvements was a media day press event for the men’s basketball team ahead of their first game.
This event gave broadcasting students the opportunity to ask athletes questions about the upcoming season. These athletes included Christian Yeates, Randy Vasquez, Moussa Berete, Max Shosa, Ronaldo Wakadi, Cedric Lewis, CJ Riley, Jaden Pena, and Jaeden Stewart. It was also in conjunction with their media day, which is for content throughout the season, such as roster pictures, game day posts, and promotional videos.
The men’s basketball team has a brand-new look to it with a slew of transfers coming in along with a freshman class of recruits. There are only two returners from the starting five of last season, so there are plenty of fresh faces on the roster for the upcoming season. A constant for the Bulldogs is their head coach, Joe Cabral, who has been in that position since 2021.
The two returners to the starting five are Randy Vasquez and Christian Yeates who were both key pieces in the Bulldogs success last year, which ended in a loss in the GNAC Quarterfinals to Lasell University. Yeates and Vasquez were both asked what it means to be leaders and what they’ve done to create cohesiveness within the team.
Vasquez said, “It starts with us being on the same page, communicating every day. We believe that we’re a family on and off the court.”
Throughout the summer, the team had shared workout plans and spent a lot of time in the gym. Although they could not be together in the summer, the preseason has been the time for the team to gel and create team chemistry that will translate to the court once their season starts.
Most of the players have already gotten a taste of college basketball, while the freshmen have yet to experience the speed of an official game. Freshman, Jaedan Stewart, talked about his transition into playing college basketball. He mentioned, “High school basketball is so much slower than college. In college, you just get the rebound and push it. You just have to get used to playing faster.”
With there only being two players returning that were consistently in the starting five last season, there is a lot of room for people to grow into those roles and earn a starting spot. As for the starting lineup, Jaden Pena said that he focuses on controlling what he can control. He said, “One thing I can control is my effort, my playstyle, my ability, so I just have to do what needs to be done.”
With all these moving parts on the team, the GNAC has ranked Dean at 10th for the preseason poll out of 13 teams. When asked about this, the players had differing opinions. Some saw it as disrespect, motivation, or just had no feelings about what people voted on without seeing this team play a second of basketball together.
Ronaldo Wakadi’s thoughts were that “rankings don’t really show the whole story. We don’t believe that we’re number ten, we believe that we’re going to dominate. When it’s time to compete, when it all matters, we’ll come out on top.”
The first game of the season is coming up, and the message going into that game is “just go out and play hard, put on a show for everyone to watch,” Wakadi added. The team has been building up their chemistry and sharpening their skills throughout training camp, but the real test will come soon with the start of the regular season.
The Bulldogs kick off their 2025-2026 campaign at home against Lesley University on November 10th at 7 PM.
