1. For the first time in years, Idaho State enters a season with mild expectations. Last year, despite a two-week preseason quarantine, anxiety that every game was going to get cancelled, some games actually getting cancelled and more than half the roster playing their first Division I games, Idaho State battled. The Bengals finished 13-11, just the program’s second season above .500 in 18 years.

Even more clear was the upward trajectory under coach Ryan Looney. ISU was 8-22 his first season and finished fourth in the conference in year two. So, what’s it going to take for the Bengals to take the next leap and compete for a conference championship?

“Probably just buy into the team,” said senior guard Austin Smellie.

“For us, we know where we have to improve,” Looney said. “We don’t want to be any different than we were defensively a year ago. We want to still continue to become one of the elite rebounding teams in America. We know we have to become a better offensive team.”

2. Looney’s right. Idaho State’s offensive struggles boiled down to two things: Turnovers and poor shooting from deep. The Bengals were 10th in the Big Sky in turnovers and ninth in 3-point percentage.

The lack of ball security can be pretty easily chalked up to guys adjusting to 1. Division I basketball and 2. Learning Looney’s complicated “Swing” offense. The 3-point shooting was more confounding. Throughout the season, ISU struggled with shot selection and continued to huck up low-percentage looks from beyond the arc, which made ball movement an emphasis of preseason practices.

“There’s a line with being aggressive,” senior Tarik Cool said. “In plays, I know where my spots are going to come and I’m fine making the pass to my teammates if that’s the right play. I trust them to make shots.”

3. Also key was the Bengals’ summer shootarounds, in which Looney had guys practically live next to the shooting machines this summer. For weeks, each player would come into the gym daily and have to knock down 300 triples in 26 minutes. One benefactor of the constant shooting was senior Daxton Carr, who connected on just over a quarter of his 3-point attempts last year.

“Yeah, I definitely (noticed my percentages went up),” Carr said. “A lot of that had to do with confidence and just coming in there and having a lot of repetition and finding what I like in my shot and what I can improve on it.”

4. For those hoping Idaho State makes a jump into the Big Sky’s elite in Looney’s third year, perhaps their biggest source of confidence comes from the four newcomers Idaho State brought in.

– Freshman guard A.J. Burgin was a casualty of COVID. Because the pandemic essentially shut down summer basketball and froze recruitment, the San Diego native didn’t get much recruiting attention. Idaho State was the benefactor. Burgin, if nothing else, looks the part. He’s a 6-foot-4, 200-pound guard who was a monster over the summer on the shooting machine. Perhaps the best note on Burgin: Coaches have had to tone him down in practice for being too physical.

“He can shoot the ball like crazy and is a great offensive player,” Smellie said of Burgin. “He’ll definitely be a good spark for us.”

– If Burgin looks the part, Louis Stormark looks like Zeus landed in Pocatello. The 6-foot-8, 240-pound freshman forward for Denmark could be made of brick and no one would bat an eye. On some nights, he could be guarded by guys a few inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than him, which is bound to create some mismatches, especially for someone who can shoot it as well as he can from deep. The question is his defense.

“(He’s) learning you can’t get away with some things defensively in the NCAA that you probably can in international basketball or FIBA,” Looney said. “But I think he’ll be a special player in time.”

– Pablo Tamba is a perfect player in Looney’s system. He’s a long, positionless wing who can knock down the 3-ball. During a scrimmage the other day, Looney said, Tamba was one of the standouts. That’s even more impressive given he missed a chunk of the summer because he was playing for Spain’s U20 team.

“He’s improved a lot in just the last couple months that he’s been here,” Smellie said. “So I’m expecting and hoping that he’ll continue to improve during the season.”

– The one transfer Idaho State brought in was forward Jared Rodriguez, who started his career at Idaho then transferred to San Diego and now is back in the Big Sky with the Bengals. A 6-foot-8 forward, Rodriguez only averaged a half-dozen points in 16 minutes for San Diego but was a 41% 3-point shooter at Idaho. That’s what Looney is hoping he can replicate in Pocatello.

“We thought we needed another long guy who could really stretch the defense, shoot it all the way out past the 3-point line and he’s proven his ability to do that,” Looney said.

5. The question one may have now is how much time will these newcomers actually have on the court. According to Looney, that’s an ongoing discussion.

“I think all four of them are doing a really good job. What exact role they’ll have on game day I think is yet to be determined,” Looney said. “We have these two exhibitions (against Multnomah on Saturday and Life Pacific next Friday) coming up. There will be opportunities for all four of them to get their feet wet in those.”

6. Last season, Idaho State’s most common starting lineup included Cool, Smellie, Carr, point guard Robert Ford and center Brayden Parker. The main reason why that stayed largely intact late in the season was defense.

Carr and Smellie didn’t exactly light up the stat sheet but they were stout defensively and knew how to move the ball within the offense. If guys like Emmit Taylor III, Malik Porter and any of the newcomers prove they can get on the floor and there’s no defensive drop off, perhaps the starting lineup could fluctuate.