Just under eight months ago, Colorado State men’s basketball finished its best season in recent history, winning the Mountain West championship and making it one possession away from the Sweet 16 round in the NCAA Tournament.
A roster led by former head coach Niko Medved, which featured NBA talent Nique Clifford, March Madness hero Kyan Evans and four-year guard Jalen Lake, was a force to be reckoned with. The Rams put themselves on the nationwide map.
But CSU will have none of those names around in the 2025-26 season.
Losing players to the transfer portal, the NBA and graduation left the Rams with plenty of holes on the roster needing to be filled; a new era is imminent for CSU.
Current head coach Ali Farokhmanesh is no stranger to CSU’s program and already has a clear idea of how to keep the squad moving in a positive direction.
“I love the competitiveness of this group,” Farokhmanesh said. “Everyone can play different positions. We have a mix and match of what guys can do and what other guys can’t, and they all complement each other really well. … I’m excited to see how that evolves over time.”
Farokhmanesh was hired as head coach in March after Medved’s departure to Minnesota. And after being on staff since 2018 as an assistant coach, it was a fitting transition.
“The way you handle the bench, the way you handle the guys, I think Niko taught me a lot of those things,” Farokhmanesh said. “And my coach in college taught me a lot of that, too. … Niko definitely prepared me for, like, how you visualize the game, how the process goes through, what you’re thinking about, how you’re managing personalities. Watching him for eight years helped me a lot.”
As for the construction of the roster, the Rams filled out the team with some grabs out of the transfer portal and also some redshirts, who will be getting their first true season with the team.
With none returning, the collection of guards for CSU looks the most different from last season. Farokhmanesh and his coaching staff went to work in the transfer portal, picking up the likes of Brandon Rechsteiner, Jase Butler, Josh Pascarelli and Jevin Muniz to suffice the team’s need for guards.
All four are expected to play prominent roles this year, as Rechsteiner and Butler headline the bunch. Rechsteiner transferred from Virginia Tech, starting in 17 games and averaging seven points as a sophomore.
Only a sophomore, Butler has potential as a new piece coming in from Washington, where he only appeared in 18 games off the bench. A new role could await him with the Rams.
“Us guards are all going to have to find our niche skill set that we can bring to the team,” Butler said. “For me specifically, it’s just defense, plugging in gaps, being versatile at my size and kind of doing a little bit of everything.”
Carey Booth, a 6-foot-10-inch junior transfer from Illinois, has the proper makings of a big player in today’s college game, being able to stretch the floor and be a paint player. The Rams only held one true center on their roster last season, so the addition of more size can always help.
While CSU clearly had to reshape a larger part of its roster, the Rams were able to retain a couple of key members of last year’s MW championship team to bolster the depth.
Rashaan Mbemba, Kyle Jorgensen and Nikola Djapa all played their own roles last season and elected to remain in Fort Collins despite the considerable number of departures elsewhere. For a team entering a new era of hoops, the leadership in some returning pieces may help to ease the team into the season.
“They have done a great job of helping (the new players) adjust offensively and culturally, just how we go about our things on a daily basis,” Farokhmanesh said. “Rashaan’s been amazing at that, … but all of those guys have helped with establishing the culture and establishing how we go about our business on a day-to-day basis. … The basketball is the basketball, right? But it’s the culture piece of it, and that’s the huge piece of keeping those guys here and keeping that continuity going.”
For the 6-foot-7-inch, 250-pound forward Mbemba, he’s aware of what awaits him this season as far as his role. But a greater opportunity for his potential awaits after having a fully healthy summer to train, unlike any of his past summers.
“It’s a blessing,” Mbemba said. “I’ve been here two years and had two rough summers with my groin stuff. … So having the first summer to really get to know the guys off the court, but really, like, on the court, play with them — you get the chemistry up. I’m just glad and thankful to be able to do that.”
Jorgensen is coming off a successful first season in which he had a solid bench role as a true freshman. Knowing now what’s expected of him alongside all the new pieces, he seeks to fit himself into this team wherever needed.
“For me, it feels pretty similar (to last year),” Jorgensen said. “But as a team, it’s different. I think we got more depth than we had last year. We don’t have Nique Clifford; we don’t have guys like our main guys who get more. I think that’s a strength for us, though.”
Despite a new head coach and a heap of roster changes, many schemes and gameplans for the team may stay the same as Farokhmanesh works out the offense and stretches out the shot diet between players, looking into where the team can excel on that side of the ball.
“We don’t have Nique (Clifford),” Farokhmanesh said. “I think in some ways it’s similar in a sense that we have shooting, we have the kind of Jalen Lakes who can play off of pin downs and actions like that. … You see (Pascarelli) and (Rechsteiner), and we have different guys in that sense.”
For a team built off depth, the Rams enter their season with no set starting lineups or exact measures of how many minutes each guy may get on a game-to-game basis.
Yet the confidence exhilarated from a team that has continued to build a great deal of chemistry during summer workouts and practices leading up to the season is telling of how the Farokhmanesh era could get off to a hot start, especially in a nationally rising basketball program with a conference championship and NCAA Tournament appearance season under its belt.
“Our focus is all on getting better as a team, playing as much as we can, seeing the different kinds of styles we have,” Mbemba said. “And I think everybody’s very excited for the first game to see how we’re going to do, and it’s where the focus is right now.”
Reach Devin Imsirpasic at sports@collegian.com or on social media at @DImsirpasic.
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