The Northern Michigan University men’s basketball team poses for their team photo at the Vandament Arena in Marquette recently. (Photo courtesy NMU)

MARQUETTE — This week opens a rather unique season for the Northern Michigan University men’s basketball team.

The Wildcats are in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, for the first two of three consecutive games there at the Justagame Fieldhouse.

NMU faces a pair of Missouri-based teams this weekend, playing Maryville at 8 p.m. EST Friday and Missouri-St. Louis at 8 p.m. EST Saturday as part of the NCAA D2 Midwest Region Tip-Off.

The following weekend, specifically at 4 p.m. EST on Saturday, Nov. 16, the Wildcats return to “the Dells” to take on Illinois-Springfield.

After two more road games the weekend before Thanksgiving, Northern opens its home season at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30, against Concordia.

This weekend’s games will be broadcast on radio station WUPZ 94.9 FM The Bay as Wildcats hockey will be on sister station The Point.

NMU’s schedule is just a small part of the uniqueness to this season.

The Concordia game will be the first these Wildcats play in their new home, the former volleyball-only Vandament Arena, which was renovated and expanded over the past year to accomodate the larger crowds that basketball games often draw. Seating on all four sides of the court is reported with a capacity of 1,500.

The Wildcats opened their season on Oct. 13 with an exhibition played in the usually-football-only Superior Dome against NCAA Division I and Big 10 member Michigan State University. Drawing an estimated 11,500 spectators, it was a way to honor NMU alumnus Tom Izzo, who has been the Spartans’ head coach for about three decades and has been named to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame for his coaching.

And NMU is coming off back-to-back appearances in the Division II national tournament, something that either has never happened before or requires you to look back more than 40 years in Northern men’s hoops history.

Wildcats sixth-year head coach Matt Majkrzak is coming off a GLIAC Coach of the Year season, only the second time an NMU mentor has won the award.

“I’m excited about the new faces that we have,” Majkrzak said in an NMU Sports Information news release previewing this weekend. “Dylan (Kuehl) is up there with the best players in the conference and he’s grown as a leader, Brian Parzych was our best player two years ago before he got hurt, and then we have a mix of some returners, some transfers and freshmen.

“This has been a long preseason since the Michigan State game. I like where we are at, but at the same time, we have to go play against real teams now to get better.”

Kuehl leads a 17-player roster that only includes six returnees from last year’s GLIAC regular season champions and NCAA tournament participants.

Kuehl is noted for his “freakish athleticism” with his dunks always just a good alley-oop pass away. In the past week, he was named to the GLIAC Preseason First Team after earning GLIAC First Team and GLIAC Defensive Team honors at the end of last season.

For his career, Kuehl averages 14.3 points per game as he is closing in on 1,000 career points at 929. He also averages 6.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.1 blocked shots over two seasons while shooting 52.2% from the floor.

Last season, he made a GLIAC-high 161 field goals and was fourth with 163 rebounds.

Parzych is the veteran presence in the NMU backcourt, averaging 10.6 ppg over the last two seasons and 3 assists a game in his career.

He’ll be joined by transfers Julien Smith from Missouri S&T, Gerald Gittens from the University of Mary, Derek Merwick from Midland and Biggie Luster from Clarke.

Smith is amongst the nation’s leading returning scorers with 1,623 career points (15.9 ppg) over four seasons at Missouri S&T, while Gittens averaged 13.8 ppg last year at Mary.

In the frontcourt, returning are Sam Privet and Jackson Dudek, along with redshirt freshman Peter Lattos.

Four freshmen who combined to score an incredible 8,216 points in their high school careers add potential firepower for the Wildcats — Michael McNabb, Cody Schmitz, St. Ignace product Jonny Ingalls and Isaiah Allen.

Two seasons ago, NMU won a program-record 25 games while going 25-8, significant for a program more than a century old. Last year, the Wildcats were 22-11 while tying a program-longest 13-game win streak and winning the GLIAC regular season at 14-4.

Majkrzak has a .606 winning percentage at 86-56, which includes a .712 clip (47-19) the past two years.

Both of this weekend’s opponents have never faced the Wildcats before and are members of the Great Lakes Valley Conference, a conference often paired with the GLIAC in NCAA tourney selections for their region.

Maryville was 12-14 last season and picked 12th of their league’s 15 teams in the preseason.

Top returning scorers are Noah Courtney at 13.0 ppg, Luke Williams (11.7) and Dewayne Vass (10.2).

Missouri-St. Louis was 13-16 last season and has been picked seventh in the GLVC.

Top returnees are Troy Glover II at 10.1 ppg and 8.1 rebounds per game last year, Emanuel Prospere II (11.6 ppg) and Savon Wykle (9.7 ppg).

Finally, NMU was only picked third in the GLIAC preseason poll after winning the conference, possibly in part due to the departure of GLIAC Player of the Year Max Weisbrod, who left for Division I Northern Iowa.

Lake Superior State got nine of the 11 first-place votes as the preseason coaches’ top pick in the conference, while No. 2 Ferris State at No. 3 NMU each got a single first-place vote. Grand Valley State was a close fourth, with the rest of the league, including Michigan Tech tied for sixth, trailing. League newcomer Roosevelt was picked for 11th, the conference basement.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.