No sugarcoating it — those were the local paper’s words when the University of Evansville men’s basketball season ended, and head coach David Ragland didn’t argue. The Purple Aces went 7-25, finished 312th in the final KenPom rankings, and by February injuries had whittled the rotation to seven available players. Now comes the fifth year of the Ragland era, with ten new faces and a blunt promise from the coach himself: “We all have to take blame for what happened last year. We all have to be accountable, starting with me.” The quote is the whole season in a sentence — run toward it, or run from it.
This is a proud program that has spent too long in the wilderness. Evansville doesn’t have a winning record since 2018, and the Aces have been waiting for a breakthrough since their last NCAA Tournament trip in 1999. But the history here is real: the program dates to 1919, Jerry Sloan — yes, that Jerry Sloan — played his college ball for the Aces in the 1960s before becoming one of the NBA’s great players and coaches, and Missouri Valley Conference membership means Evansville still shares a league with programs that dance in March every year.
The stage is right. The Ford Center, opened in 2011 on the downtown Evansville riverfront, is one of the Valley’s best buildings — a modern arena that gives the Aces a genuine home-court weapon when it fills. The MVC’s identity is Arch Madness in St. Louis, and in this league you don’t need to be the best team in November. You need to be the best team for four days in March. Evansville’s whole season builds toward that math.
Ragland’s fifth season is the pivot point. Six players entered the transfer portal after last year, two more graduated, and the staff rebuilt around a core of four returners the program believes in. The centerpiece is senior forward AJ Casey, a 6-9 Chicagoan out of Whitney Young who put together one of the Valley’s best individual seasons last year — 13.5 points and 5.9 rebounds a game, Third Team All-MVC by March. He’s the kind of senior a rebuild gets built around.
Around Casey, the returning guards give Evansville a base: sophomore Bryce Quinet (8.7 points, 2.4 assists) started as a freshman and has the keys to the offense; sophomore forward James Dyson-Merwe, a 6-11 Australian, showed real promise in spot minutes off the bench; and guard Aaron Gutman took a redshirt year to develop. Then comes the cavalry — ten new faces, heavy on size and international flavor.
The portal additions start with 6-7 wing Max Langenfeld, who arrives from Florida Atlantic with two years of eligibility, and 6-10 Dane Gustav Winther from Northern Illinois. Seven-footer Yannick Pinas came from Amsterdam by way of Obradoiro in Spain. Salt Lake Community College guard Makuei Riek, Swiss wing Junior Kemm, Czech forward David Nejezchleb and Los Angeles guard Rafayel Masumyan round out an international class, with freshmen Jake Genschaw, Caden Symons and Bryce Renn plus hometown sophomore Luke Ellspermann filling out the depth chart.
The question is cohesion, and the Aces know it. The new group had been together barely a month when camp opened. But there’s a logic to the construction: size everywhere — the roster features multiple 6-10s and a true seven-footer — and a Valley that, top to bottom, keeps getting more athletic. Evansville’s path isn’t to out-talent the league’s best; it’s to defend, rebound, and let Casey and Quinet carry the scoring load.
What success looks like here is modest by design: a winning record — the program’s first since 2018 — and a team playing its best basketball in St. Louis. The Valley’s middle is always crowded, and a leap from 312th in KenPom to the top 200 would be one of the country’s biggest turnarounds. The Aces don’t need a miracle. They need health, a senior leader, and ten newcomers who chose to run toward the problem.
There’s something fitting about Evansville’s story being written by a coach who chose accountability over excuses. Ragland is a UE man through and through, and he took the job knowing exactly what the rebuild looked like. Year five is when rebuilds either turn or they don’t. The Ford Center faithful have waited long enough. The Aces know it. So does everybody on that roster.
The Valley gauntlet is the other half of the story. Arch Madness in St. Louis is one of the great conference tournaments in the sport — four days, ten fan bases, and a bid that has launched more than a few Cinderellas. Evansville’s tournament history has its moments, but the program hasn’t been a real factor in March for years. Changing that starts with the regular season: the Aces need to defend the Ford Center, steal road wins in places like Cedar Falls and Peoria, and arrive in St. Louis with momentum instead of math working against them.
The staff gives the rebuild a fighting chance. Associate head coach Terry Johnson, assistants George Swanson, Peter Funk and Sammy Dowd, and — in a nice bit of symmetry — DJ Balentine, the former Evansville star guard, now coaching the next generation of Aces backcourts. Joel Zimba’s arrival as men’s basketball general manager adds a modern front-office layer to a program that is finally operating like the current era demands. The pieces off the court are in place. Now the wins have to follow.