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MARQUETTE — Only a defending league champion could take umbrage at being picked third in their league’s preseason poll as voted on by coaches.

That’s the situation the Northern Michigan University men’s basketball team faces after the Wildcats won the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference regular season title for the first time since the 1992-93 season last spring.

The Wildcats also advanced to the NCAA Division II Tournament for the second straight season under the tutelage of now sixth-year mentor Matt Majkrzak, who was voted GLIAC Coach of the Year last season.

Northern Michigan University’s Gerald Gittens drives to the basket in the first half of a college men’s basketball exhibition game played against Michigan State at the Superior Dome in Marquette on Oct. 13. (Journal photo by Caden Sierra)

Two years ago, NMU set a program record for wins after compiling a 25-8 record, then followed it up last year with a 22-11 mark that included the best league record of 14-4 in the GLIAC and a 13-game win streak in the middle of the season that matched the program’s best in its more than a century of existence.

But the Wildcats were only picked third in the 11-team league’s poll of coaches that was released on Thursday after they were asked to predict the upcoming season’s finish.

If it’s any consolation, the two teams picked in front of Northern — Lake Superior State and Ferris State — also qualified and won games at the NCAA tourney last spring.

The Lakers received nine of the 11 first-place votes — each coach votes for all teams but their own — and 98 polling points. Ferris was a distant second, earning one first-place vote and 88 points.

And the Wildcats also won over a coach by receiving one first-place vote and 80 poll points.

Northern Michigan University’s Brian Parzych celebrates scoring two points during the second half of a GLIAC Tournament quarterfinal men’s basketball game played against Purdue Northwest at the Berry Events Center in Marquette on March 6. (Photo courtesy Cara Kamps)

Grand Valley State was a close fourth, despite getting no first-places, with 77 points.

The rest of the league was at least 20 points behind the Lakers — Wayne State is fifth with 57 points, Michigan Tech and Wisconsin-Parkside tied for sixth with 50 points apiece, Saginaw Valley State eighth with 41, Purdue Northwest ninth with 32, Davenport 10th with 17 and league newcomer Roosevelt 11th with 15.

The league coaches also might’ve questioned an NMU team that returns only six players who saw any kind of court time a year ago.

The Wildcats lost GLIAC Player of the Year Max Weisbrod to the NCAA transfer portal after he left for Division I Northern Iowa.

But they brought back redshirt junior — meaning he’s in his fourth year at Northern — Dylan Kuehl, Northern’s representative on the league’s All-GLIAC Preseason Team. He earned one of five spots with the top group, the First Team.

Kuehl rightfully was described as having “freakish athleticism” in the NMU Sports Information news release about the GLIAC poll and the Wildcats.

He’s been named All-GLIAC First Team and All-Defensive Team in each of his first two seasons, while he also earned a spot on the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ All-District Second Team last year.

Kuehl, a 6-foot-6, 200-pound forward, has averaged 14.3 points per game in his two years at NMU and is closing in on the 1,000-point milestone at 929 points. The Iron Ridge, Wisconsin, native also averages 6.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.1 blocked shots while shooting 52.2% from the floor.

Last season, he topped the league with 161 field goals made and was fourth with 163 rebounds.

Tasked with merging plenty of new talent with returning players like Kuehl is Majkrzak, who has a .606 winning percentage with a 86-56 mark in five seasons at NMU, including a .712 win rate at 47-19 the past two years.

Due to winning the regular season title and advancing past the first round, Northern hosted the GLIAC Tournament semifinals and finals for the first time since 1993, the same year Dean Ellis won Coach of the Year, the only other time an NMU men’s coach has achieved that feat.

And last year’s Wildcats dealt with injuries all season long, but Majkrzak was able to make it work, plugging and playing different lineups seamlessly with the 13-game win streak that matched a mark first set in 1984-85.

Majkrzak will be joined on the bench by second-year associate head coach Keil Ganz, in his second stint at NMU after he was Majkrzak’s first assistant at NMU in 2019.

New to the staff is first-year assistant John-Michael Hughes, who most recently was a graduate assistant at now-Big 10 member Southern California, and he brings strong connections and respected contacts across the amateur, collegiate and pro landscape. While at USC under head coach Andy Enfield, Hughes was entrusted to work in numerous aspects of that program, though specifically in player development, including with 2024 NBA Draft picks Bronny James and Isaiah Collier.

NMU’s returnees on its 17-player roster include senior guard Brian Parzych along with redshirt junior forwards Sam Privet and Jackson Dudek.

New to the backcourt are a quartet of college 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 his four seasons at Missouri S&T, while Gittens averaged 13.8 ppg last year at Mary.

Smith and Gittens are expected to lead the guards along with Parzych, the established veteran in Northern’s backcourt. Parzych averaged 10.6 ppg over the last two seasons and three assists a game in his career.

Joining Kuehl in anchoring the frontcourt are Privet, Dudek and redshirt freshman Peter Lattos, with the latter three likely having bigger roles than in the past.

Four freshmen — Michael McNabb, Cody Schmitz, Isaiah Allen and St. Ignace product Jonny Ingalls — combined to score a remarkable 8,216 points in high school for some real potential firepower for the Wildcats.

This year’s Northern squad — along with the NMU women’s team — will be the first Wildcats basketball squads to play in Vandament Arena, which previously was the exclusive home of NMU volleyball. But an arena expansion produced four-sided stadium seating for about 1,500 with a modernized look and two state-of-the-art scoreboards.

On Oct. 13, the NMU men played the most notable preseason exhibition in program history when they hosted NCAA Division I blueblood Michigan State in front of 11,500 fans in the Superior Dome Showdown, which has been touted as the largest crowd for an indoor event in Upper Peninsula history.

In a weekend that was much more than the game on the court, Wildcats alumnus and MSU longtime head coach Tom Izzo’s No. 10 jersey was retired, while broadcasting icons Bill Raftery and Lisa Byington announced the game on the Big Ten Network.

In this matchup of Division I vs. Division II, the D-I Spartans prevailed 70-53 as Northern was led by Dudek with 14 points.

These Wildcats open their regular season with games against a pair of Missouri schools on Friday and next Saturday at the JustAGame Crossover in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. NMU faces Maryville at 8 p.m. EST Friday and Missouri-St. Louis at 8 p.m. EST Saturday.

After another three road games, Northern opens its home season at Vandament at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 30, against Concordia, followed by its GLIAC opening weekend in Marquette against Purdue NW on Dec. 5 and Parkside on Dec. 7.

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Here are the GLIAC Preseason Teams in men’s baskeball:

First Team — Marcus Tomashek, Michigan Tech, also Preseason Player of the Year; Dylan Kuehl, NMU; Tyson Edmondson, LSSU; Ethan Erickson, Ferris State; and Will Dunn, GVSU

Second Team — Kingsley Perkins, LSSU; Ethan Alderink, GVSU; Robert Lee, Wayne State; Josiah Palmer, Parkside; and D’Juan “Toodles” Seal, Saginaw Valley State

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