The Augustana men’s basketball team started the season with an 82-70 win against the Coe College Kohawks in its first game and home opener on Tuesday, Nov. 12. This game also marked the start of the Vikings’ first full season under head coach Jordan Delp, who was named the acting head coach on Dec. 20, 2023, and eventually the official head coach in February 2024.
Going into the season, the team was voted fourth in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) preseason coaches poll, the program’s highest rating in the poll since the 2019-20 season. Though the poll gauges where each coach sees each team, senior Chase Larsen is one player who does not overthink it.
“We see it, but it’s only a projection,” Larsen said. “I can tell you many times where the bottom teams projected in our conference finished at the top and vice versa. It’s nice to have a bit of a higher projection than we’ve had in the past, but again, it’s not important to us.”
That projection is a huge step forward compared to last season, where the team was voted to be tied for last place. Contributing to that boost was the Vikings returning all five starters, including the team’s top seven scorers and top four rebounders from last season. Coach Delp has worked with the team and many players since he joined the Augustana coaching staff as an assistant coach in 2021 and knows the effort they put into the sport.
“We have a group of guys who have taken their lumps and understand that there’s a lot of sacrifice that’s required to win, that winning is hard, and that we have to attack each day with that in mind,” Delp said. “They know that some days things are going to go well and some days things aren’t as well. But the next day, we had to wake up and get ready to go.”
The Vikings’ efforts to prepare for the game against Coe indeed showed as the team started with a quick seven-point lead to force a Kohawk timeout. Fifth-Year Tyler Knuth scored 16 points in the first half, including a pair of three-pointers that helped keep the Augustana lead in the double digits.
However, a resilient Kohawk team would not go down quickly. They cut the lead to five at halftime to avoid staying down by too much. In the first half, Coe shot 50 percent from the field and 75 percent from behind the three-point arc, while the Vikings shot an outstanding 63 percent from the field and 58 percent from the three-point range.
“Our potential when we make shots is really exciting,” Senior Evan Ambrose said. “The biggest thing to note is that it’s game one, and we have so much work to do on the offensive and defensive sides. If we can couple that great shooting with stops on defense, we’ll be pretty hard to guard.”
Both teams cooled off in the second half, but that allowed the Vikings to pull away and clamp down on the defensive side of the ball. Sophomore Ray Maurchie scored three baskets in a stretch where the Vikings scored four consecutive baskets in two minutes while the defense held the Koehawks to a five-minute scoring drought.
After extending the lead to 62-49, the Vikings cruised and won 82-70 to start their season. Ambrose led Augustana with 23 points, while Knuth added 21 points, and junior Staishaun Kelly added 12 points and two steals off the bench. An eye-popping statistic from the game was the Kohawks shooting 100% from the free-throw line in the first half, but in the second half when facing the Vike Squad, the Augustana student section, they shot 57%.
“For us to come out and be in front of a great home crowd, especially those Carver Crazies in our student section, was a huge way to start our year,” Delp said. “It gives us a little spark right now. We want to be disciplined, and we want to win each day, but we’d be foolish not to think that atmosphere makes an impact on our guys.”
This game also marked the start of the first full season for Coach Delp. After playing for the Vikings from 2004-2009, Delp was added as an assistant coach in the 2021-22 season before being named acting head coach and later the full-time head coach. Senior Mike Hamilton explained how Delp has helped the team grow.
“His basketball IQ is super high,” Hamilton said. “He’s a smart guy. He’s very disciplined and has a great work ethic. I could talk about him all day, but he is focused on us becoming better basketball players and men. I think that’s where he stepped up from being an acting head coach and got us to just enjoy the game again through all the adversity we faced.”
The Vikings’ next game will be on November 26, when they travel to UW-Platteville. This marks the end of a three-game road stretch that started with a 67-48 win against the University of Dubuque and a 84-73 overtime win against DePauw University, which moved their overall record to 3-0.