BOWLING GREEN — The Bowling Green State University’s men’s basketball team hasn’t had many problems establishing chemistry with nearly a dozen new players in the program.

With the start of the 2023-24 regular season less than two weeks away, the Falcons are already at a point where they are expecting to make some noise immediately.

“It’s a wonderful group of people, which is the most important thing. So they’ve all bought in from day one,” first-year BGSU coach Todd Simon said. “They really like playing with each other, they hang around each other, so that part’s huge.

“That’s really sped up our process, so we feel like we can be competitive early on and quickly.”

Simon brought in 10 players — almost all via the transfer portal — since taking over as BGSU’s coach in March. The former Southern Utah mentor, whose seven seasons guiding the Thunderbirds included a 65-28 record the past three years, has been happy with his team’s energy during practices.

“Guys are rooting for each other, we celebrate each other’s success,” Simon said. “The intensity is good.

“We have a lot of competitors. They don’t like losing, they don’t like making mistakes, but the energy’s been great.”

Building camaraderie with a large group of newcomers was one of Simon’s biggest challenges as his team started practicing in the summer and continued with official practices for the past month.

The players have responded.

“I feel like we automatically just clicked,” said BGSU senior forward Rashaun Agee, one of four players returning from last year’s team. “As soon as we all joined together, we always had laughs and jokes together. We just stay together.

“But on the court, we all just play so hard and we all want to win, so it’s easy for us to come together and trust one another and play hard for each other.”

Jason Spurgin, a 7-foot center who transferred to BGSU after playing three seasons under Simon at Southern Utah, said the team is a tight-knit group.

“Everyone understands what their strengths and weaknesses are, and I think we play off each other well,” Spurgin said. “The more and more we play in practice, the more and more you see it that everyone’s starting to build that chemistry and understand how different people play and how we can help each other out in different scenarios.

“So it’s a very unselfish team and everybody’s willing to learn and talk about what their best attributes are and how to get them open and how to get the other teammates open.”

Simon, an offensive-minded coach whose Southern Utah teams were among the highest scoring in the NCAA the past few years, said the Falcons’ defensive ability and post presence have stood out the most so far.

“We’ve got size inside with our bigs, but we also have enough quickness on the perimeter. So it’s going to be a combination,” he said. “We feel like we can play a lot of different ways and match people in a lot of different ways, and that’s our goal.”

An experienced BGSU roster includes six seniors, two juniors, four sophomores, and two freshmen. Agee, a 6-8 forward, led the returning players in points (9.9), rebounds (5.7), and blocks (1.1) while playing just 18 minutes per game.

Spurgin averaged 10 points and six rebounds per game for Southern Utah last season, while 6-9 senior Sam Towns tallied 6.1 points, 4.4 rebounds, and swatted 20 blocks in 27 games (20 starts) for BGSU.

“I think we’ll be difficult inside. We’ve got three guys with size with Rashaun Agee coming back and Jason Spurgin with his size and versatility and ability to shoot 3s, and Sam Towns’ ability to block shots,” Simon said. “We’ve got three very versatile guys that can help us up front, and we’ve got a lot of guards that can do a lot of things.

“[Vanderbilt transfer] Trey Thomas has a lot of experience in the [Southeastern Conference], and he brings a calming presence. Everyone’s kind of been what we expected, if not better, across the board.”

BGSU will begin the 2023-24 campaign against Chicago State at 7 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Stroh Center. The Falcons (11-20 overall, 5-13 Mid-American Conference last season), who have missed the past two MAC tournaments, begin league play with a home contest against Eastern Michigan on Jan. 2.

“We want to win every game that we schedule. That’s just kind of my nature, our program’s nature,” Simon said. “We don’t want to set a bar of going .500 or anything like that. We schedule 31 and we want to win 31, and it’s our job to kind of figure that out.

“So we’re very much about the process. Our expectation is that we’re going to compete to win every game, and we’ll let the chips fall as they may at the end.”

First Published October 24, 2023, 11:51 p.m.