The FMCC Men's Basketball team is looking forward to beginning their 2024-25 season. The Raiders are coming off another historical 2023-24 season where they finished 26-5 and were runner-up in the Region 3 Championship. Coach Ej Gallup led the Raiders back to the NJCAA DIII National Tournament for the second season in a row.
This year's squad has been busy in the gym for the last several weeks preparing for the start of the season. They are currently ranked #9 in the NJCAA DIII Pre-season rankings.
"Practices have been going great. We have a pretty intense pre-season strength and conditioning program and then obviously getting my guys up to speed on the court as well," said Coach Gallup.
The 2024 Raider roster only returns Matej Gasevic and Max Pritchett from last year's squad and several key newcomers that look to make an immediate impact.
"There are a lot of new faces for us, only returning Max and Matej from last year's team that was basically all Sophomores. But that is junior college basketball, and we are excited about our new guys. Serbia, Australia, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada are all represented by guys on our team. It's really cool to see them all come together, obviously I have experience with that as a player and as a coach. It is fun and challenging all at the same time," stated Gallup.
The Raiders first three games of the season will all be at home. They begin their season at home on Friday, November 1st when they host Kingsborough at 7pm in the Raiders Den.
We are young and we are new as a group, so there will be some growing pains, I think, especially early on. Last year at this time, I knew exactly what we had and who would score and who would rebound, and we had a lot of experience. This year is a different animal, but I think there is a lot of fun in that as well. It is going to be nice to see these guys establish their roles and figure out how to win games as a team. We have established FMCC as a program with national recognition in these past few years and with that will come a target on our back and we will get teams best shot. We are ranked in the top ten in pre-season rankings again and that is a tip of the cap to my players and coaches in the last 2-3 years. It will be up to this year's group to keep that reputation going, but I think they are up for the challenge," said Gallup.
