This season’s Caledonia Gladiators men’s team will have a distinctly different feel to the team that, once again last season, was one of the very best in Britain.
The team that will take to the court this year is younger, faster and more physical than last year’s offering, with the shift towards youth a conscious decision taken by head coach, Gareth Murray. It’s one that, he hopes, will pay off.
“We’ve changed the team this season – we retained a few guys and brought in a few new players. It’s a younger team this year with guys who we want to work with longer-term,” the 40-year-old says.
“The style of basketball we’re playing this season is different. Last year, we were a slower team whereas this year, we want to pick up the pace.”
Over the summer, Gladiators signed Totonitoluwa Fagbenle, a 23-year-old 6ft 9 British forward from London and Isaiah Hill, a 23-year-old 6-foot point guard from California while the likes of Fraser Malcolm, Patrick Whelan and Ian Dubose remain on the roster from last season.
Gladiators finished second in the BBL last season, which has now been renamed the Super League, but the youthfulness of this season’s squad means there’s fewer experienced players for Murray to fall back on as the upcoming season progresses.
The prospect, however, of being able to mould this squad into exactly the team he wants is an exciting one for the Arbroath native, who is also a former GB internationalist.
“For me, this less experienced squad means there’s a bit more teaching involved – building the foundations and helping the new guys fit in with the identity of the club. We’re strong defensively so we want the new guys to fit in with that,” he says.
“With the more experienced players, they’ll have seen a lot of different situations in their career and so perhaps can adapt easier to what’s going on but equally, older players can sometimes have bad habits that are hard to shift. So, with the younger guys, it’s about building good habits every day.”
Gladiators begin their Super League season this evening at home to Manchester and while Murray is keen for his side to make a positive start to their league campaign at their Playsport Arena in East Kilbride, he’s mindful that there’s a long, hard season ahead – Gladiators could play upwards of 50 matches across all competitions over the coming months, including a European campaign that begins in October – and Murray knows he must walk the fine line between pushing for improvement and ensuring his players remain fit and healthy.
“We’re not peaking now –we want to continue improving as the season progresses,” he says.
"We’ve got European basketball next month then we’ll have four chances to win trophies throughout the season.
“In this sport, there’s times when you need to play really well and times when you need to be solid and we need to get that right throughout the season.
“For the coaching team, we need to look at how we can help each individual grow and improve on a daily basis but the games come so thick and fast so we also need to make sure we’re managing their bodies.
“In the next couple of weeks, there’ll be times when we’re playing four games in a week so we need to find the balance between resting the players' bodies and continuing to improve as a team.”
Having won the club’s first trophy for 20 years in the 2022/23 season – they won the BBL Trophy - Murray has his sights set on bringing yet more silverware to the club over the coming season.
This will be no easy task but Murray has charged his players with producing strong performances in all competitions and that will, he hopes, mean they end the season with at least one trophy in the bag.
“As always, we’re looking to be one of the best teams in the Super League and in Europe, we want to be competing well. We’ve got some tough teams in our group but we showed last year that we can hang with these quality teams in Europe,” he says.
“And domestically, there’s four trophies to play for and while we might not win everything, we certainly want to be in finals and competing.
“We want to end the season with a trophy and we know this team is well capable of that.”
