By: Loren Miller, USU Eastern Sports Information

PRICE – As he enters his seventh season at the helm of the USU Eastern’s men’s basketball program, Head Coach Vando Becheli says that if his young team can do three things, they will be successful.

Those three things are: get healthy, learn the system and play together.

Accomplishing those three things will be vital to accomplishing the goal of winning a Region XVIII title.

“We want to compete for the Region XVIII title but we know we have other schools in our conference that are really good. This year we are very young with 12 freshman and I know it is going to be hard but we will try the best we can,” said Becheli.

It is only the first week of the season and the Eagles have already dealt with injuries to almost half their roster. So getting healthy is a major priority for Coach Becheli especially at the post position.

With three post players dealing with injuries already it has forced Coach Becheli to play some of his wings and guards out of position in practice to prepare for the upcoming season.

It will be a lot of work getting the post players up to speed but the coaching staff understands its what needs to be done.

“We are a month behind with our bigs are out and they need to get in shape and be ready to play. Our guards are needing to play out of position and it’s hard to coach my team with players not playing in the right spots,” said Becheli. “It is a lot of work but it is what we have to do”.

Once his team gets healthy, Becheli wants to run an uptempo style of offense especially in transition. He also knows that in order to do that his team will have to play great defense to force turnovers.

He also hopes to run an effective half court game as well in order to be ready for the conference schedule.

“We need to execute on half court too because when it comes to tournament they won’t let you just go uptempo,” said Becheli.

To help his team get ready for the season, Becheli is counting on team captain and returning guard Matija Novkovic.

“He has learned and matured a lot since last year and he is capable of taking on a bigger role this season,” said Becheli.

The other rotation player returning to the Eagles this season with Novkovic is fellow Serbian Ognjen Pantovic, a post player who played a lot of minutes in his role last year.

“He is a versatile guy and he will help us this year compete for a region title because he will play better and knows what we expect from him,” said Becheli.

Novkovic is excited to have Pantovic back along with newcomer Stevan Jeremic as bigs this season because he feels confident in their ability to help in the paint during conference games, something the Eagles struggled with last year.

“They both are very important, we struggled with CSI and SLCC with the bigs but with Stevan and Oggie we can match up good with those teams inside,” said Novkovic.

In the backcourt for USU Eastern this season Novkovic along with a big group of freshman guards will try and replace a high scoring guard rotation from last season that included Milan Surlic’Neema NamdarLandon Swartz and Kristupas Totoris.

It will be a challenge to do but Novkovic feels that things are progressing with the new guards this season.

“We look pretty good, we are going to be better than last year and last year we were pretty good. We will miss Kris and Neema’s shooting but this year we are more athletic and our defense will be better,” said Novkovic.

After getting healthy and learning the system, team chemistry and unity will be paramount for this year’s squad because of the big turnover in roster.

This year’s roster features 12 new players on the team, 12 freshman with three returned missionaries, a married player, eight international players, and two transfers.

Even with all the changes in personnel and different personalities on the team, Novkovic says that the team is coming together positively and are off to a great start.

“We definitely have bonded and we have a pretty nice team chemistry already. We are improving that each day and we want to be one unit, like a brotherhood,” said Novkovic.

The Eagles’ game on Friday will be in Ephraim against Western Wyoming at 3:30 p.m.

Their first home game of the regular season will be next Friday at 7:30 p.m. against Western Wyoming.

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