The Weber State men’s basketball team holds the second best record in the Big Sky Conference at 16–5 overall and 11–3 in conference play.
The team rebounded after a disappointing 2019-20 campaign that saw the Wildcats go 20–12 and 12–8 in the Big Sky.
The turnaround for head coach Randy Rahe’s squad is due to an almost completely new roster this year with nearly half the team being transfer players.
Five of the team’s top players transferred to Weber State in 2020: Isiah Brown, Seikou Sisoho Jawara, Zahir Porter, Cody Carlson and Dontay Bassett.
All five players are also shooting over 30% from 3-point range, leading the Wildcats to be the fifth-best 3-point shooting team in the nation with the team hitting 39.96% of its triples.
Senior guard Brown is leading the Wildcats in scoring with 18.0 points per game.
Brown came to WSU after playing two seasons in Evanston, Illinois for Northwestern University, and then another year at Grand Canyon University where he put up 9.3 points and dished out 1.7 assists per game for the Antelopes during the 2019-20 season.
The 6-foot-2-inch guard has been a player who can get difficult buckets to fall this season for the Wildcats — including a game-winning layup on Feb. 27 at Sacramento State to extend a WSU win streak to five games.
In seven games this season, Brown has gone for over 20 points. In the Wildcats’ first two games of the season, he put up 26 and 29 points. In January he scored 22, 22 and 26 points against Tarleton State and in back-to-back games vs. SUU.
His season high came at the Dee against Northern Arizona when he dropped 31 on the Lumberjacks.
The Wildcats’ leader in assists is sophomore guard Sisoho Jawara. He has averaged 3.2 per game this season.
The Mataro, Spain native transferred to WSU following his freshman season at Loyola Marymount University. He averaged 4.4 points and 1.4 assists during his lone season with the Lions.
Sisoho Jawara’s not only been passing the ball for the Wildcats he’s also had scoring outbursts of 25 and 23 points against Idaho and Montana State while averaging 11.5 points per game on the season.
Porter, Wildcats junior guard, played last season at Netflix-famous Independence Community College in Kansas.
Porter’s second on the team in scoring; with 12.8 points per game, he’s also leading the Wildcats in 3-point percentage, shooting 44.9% from the 3-point line. He scored his season high of 24 points at Viking Pavilion vs. Portland State.
The Wildcat big men have been game changers for the team this season.
Senior forward Carlson from Duluth, Minnesota played for Concordia University, St. Paul in Division II, before transferring to WSU where he’s putting up 9.8 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.
WSU’s senior center, Bassett, out of Oakland, California transferred to the Wildcats from the University of Florida. He played three seasons in Gainesville for the Gators before heading to WSU.
He’s averaging 9.8 points and 4.4 rebound per game for the Wildcats.
This season Rahe has talked about how having big men who can shoot from the perimeter really lets the offense attack teams in multiple ways.
Bassett is shooting blank 33.3% from beyond the arc, while Carlson is shooting 48.0% from deep.
The Wildcats will head north to Boise on March 10, with a Conference Championship in mind along with a possible NCAA Tournament berth which comes with being the best of the Big Sky Conference.
The Wildcats have made the Big Dance three times under Rahe: 2007, 2014 and 2016.
But first, the Wildcats return to the Dee Events Center on March 4 and 6 to play Northern Colorado in the team’s final two regular-season games of the 2020-21 season.
