Season-long consistency is key for Roadrunners

The last-second loss in the Big West basketball tournament still stings for the Roadrunners.

On March 11, Cal State Bakersfield men’s basketball saw its hopes of a semifinal berth slip away in Las Vegas when UC Davis’s Ezra Manjon hit a game-winning layup with one second left. One breach in the defense and a hard-fought debut season in the Big West was over.

“It’s been a motivation for us this season to be more detailed in what we do,” coach Rod Barnes said at media day.

The team’s veteran leaders — those who remain after the departures of key contributors like De’Monte Buckingham, Taze Moore, Czar Perry and Ronne Readus — are eager to talk about this new, detail-oriented approach. They hope it’ll improve the team’s performance over the course of the 2021-22 season, and help them reach Barnes’s goal of returning to the NCAA Tournament.

Justin Edler-Davis, the team’s top returning scorer, is emphasizing consistency as he returns for his sixth year: “I think I have pretty good beginnings of seasons but then once February or March hits I kind of have a downturn.” It wasn’t just him; last year, the Roadrunners had a six-game conference winning streak early in the year but finished with a 9-7 league record and the No. 5 seed. They were projected No. 5 again by the media in the Big West preseason poll, and No. 6 by the coaches.

One key for greater stability is a more potent scoring offense — the Roadrunners were ninth of 11 Big West teams in points per game last year. Justin McCall, the Ridgeview alumnus who has steadily increased his scoring averages year over year, is back for a fifth season and said he hopes to improve his long-range shooting; he shot just 38 percent from beyond the arc last season. Redshirt sophomore Shaun Williams was the team’s third-highest scorer in points per game last year despite starting just three games. He’ll move into a bigger role this year.

And the team has added several key transfers who can supplement their offense right away. Canadian guard David Walker, now attending his fourth school, still has sophomore eligibility and believes he’s found a home at CSUB, where he said the coaches have told him his job is to score, and where he’s been welcomed by the team’s veterans.

“When we fall off, they’re always making sure that we get back on top,” Walker said. “I love their leadership, man.”

Antavion “Dude” Collum, a four-star prospect coming out of high school in Tennessee, joins the Roadrunners from Ole Miss and faces a turning point in his college career.