Season Preview: Kodiaks men's basketball 2024

The Lethbridge Polytechnic Kodiaks men’s basketball team has a big hole to fill as they prepare for the 2024-25 Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) season.

Four of last season’s starting five have moved on to U Sports schools including leading scorer Filip Karanovic (20 points per game), who will be attending Grant MacEwan University. Mason Hoffman (19.4 ppg) will be suiting up for the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns while Dray Walburger (22.3 ppg in the second semester) is heading to Mount Royal University. Six-foot-10 Declan Peterson (14 points, 10.6 rebounds per game) is off to the University of Calgary.

The fifth player of the starting five, Ty Lewis, is attending chiropractic school.

Kodiaks head coach Ryan Heggie said the departure of talent to the next level is just part of the game when it comes to college sports.

“We’re happy that they left to continue their careers and we’re going to miss them,” said Heggie. “You want to give them the best opportunity if they want to go somewhere. It’s a big accomplishment to help them get to the U Sports level. On the other, hand it’s hard to replace them. We had guys that were in depth to those guys last year that are now called on to play those big roles.”

Players Heggie will be looking at include six-foot-five forwards Cody Tollestrup (second year, General Arts and Science, Magrath) and Jackson Wright (second year, Business Administration, Claresholm). Tollestrup comes from a long line of great local players. His grandfather, Phil, played at Brigham Young University and the U of L and was a former national team player who competed in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal where was the fourth-leading scorer in the tournament. Phil’s brother, Tim, was a standout university player at Utah State and at the U of L before joining Lethbridge Community College (now Lethbridge Polytechnic) where he coached the Kodiaks and was director of athletics for many years.

”Trey Barton is also back and Rhett Lewis is back and all four of those guys played roles for us last year,” said Heggie. “This year it’s their time.”

“This year we’ve also added some transfers with experience like Ryan Degner (fourth year, Open Studies, Lethbridge), a local who came back. He graduated from Augustana. He went there through the Covid years where he missed one or two years. He was a North second-team all-star last year and he’ll provide some scoring and some gritty defence and leadership for us.”

Heggie went south of the border to help fill the point guard void left with the departure of Hoffman and Karanovic.

“We have Cole Lake, who is an Idaho kid who went to Western Montana right out of high school, then went on a mission,” said Heggie. “He then came back and played at Weber State for two years and decided he wanted to look elsewhere. He’s stepped in and played our point guard position for us. When you lose guys like Phil and Mason who both handled the point guard duties last year, those are hard positions to replace so we feel we’ve done really well filling that gap.”

Heggie also added a couple of local high school products in Nolan Grindle (first year, Coalhurst) and Levi Balderson (first year, General Arts and Science, Welling).

“We signed Nolan from Coalhurst and it seems like he keeps growing,” said Heggie. “I thought he was six-one when I signed him and I think he’s grown two inches already. He had a bad break during the summer run, broke his leg, so he’s probably a month away from returning.”

As for Balderson, he comes from a line of great Magrath High School players. His father, Danny, starred for the U of L Pronghorns, earning the Mike Moser Memorial Trophy as the outstanding men’s basketball player in the country in 1999-2000. Levi’s uncle, Jimmy Balderson, was a standout at BYU.

“Levi also injured himself in August ‘cowboying’ out at the ranch, but he’s back,” said Heggie. “Levi can just flat out shoot the ball and Nolan is six-three, that’s a long guard that can defend. Those are two signings locally that we’re pretty happy about.”

After posting a 14-7 record last season, Heggie is realistic about what to expect this season.

“We’re going to have a gritty team this year,” he said. “When you have to replace 75 to 80 points a game from your starting lineup, you can’t really expect these guys to come out and score 20 a night. We’re going to have to collectively score and I think we’re deep enough to score enough points to win games, but we have to stop people.

“We’re going to have to play really aggressive, gritty defence. We always play that way, but this year we’re going to have to turn it up a notch. Offensively, our goal is to fast break, which it is every year, and share the basketball. We have enough skill to go around.”

Heggie expects the South Division to be extremely competitive again.

“At the top you’re going to have St. Mary’s and SAIT, the preseason favourites,” he said. “Red Deer’s tough, Medicine Hat’s always tough. In the North you have Keyano, the defending champs, Concordia, NAIT. Lakeland, the bronze medallist from last year, are always good. It’s a very good league and there’s no nights off.”