BANGOR – The one-word slogan on the backs of their team warmup shirts pretty much says it all when describing this season’s mindset for the Husson College men’s basketball team.

“We have ‘REBOUND’ on the backs of our shirts and that’s from losing the conference last year,” said senior co-captain Ryan Rivera. “And since we are such a small team this year, we do have to concentrate on rebounding the ball.”

Rebounding has been a glaring weakness for the Braves lately, and with what shapes up as a fairly small lineup this season – the starting lineup’s average height is 6-foot-3 – coach Warren Caruso’s men will be working extra hard to crash the boards.

“Lots of pieces are in place for us offensively, but the two question marks I have is how good a defensive team we’ll be and how well we can rebound, which has been a weakness for a couple years,” Caruso said.

Despite having eight new faces among the 14 (including three redshirts), the Braves received enough votes to come close to making it into the NAIA Division II Top 25 preseason poll.

The few players who do have experience have a wealth of it and most of that is in the starting five. Bradford’s Rivera will shift from guard to small forward, senior co-captain Randy Fletcher of Temple Hills, Md., shifts from center to power forward, junior Nikos Armenakis from Thessalonika, Greece, returns to center after missing much of last season with an injury, junior Robert Pilsbury of Portland is back at shooting guard, and junior Dwayne Ailey of Howell, N.J., mans the point.

“I love playing the four [power forward] position, so having Nikos back is real good for me,” Fletcher said.

“I think we’ll be more of an uptempo team this year because of our size, and the big guys we have can run very well,” Rivera added.

Bucksport freshman guard Jason Harvey will be one of the first players off the bench along with 6-4 sophomore forward Andrius Zeikus of Marijampole, Lithuania. Freshman Phil White, also of Temple Hills, should see plenty of court time.

The Braves are motivated after seeing a three-year reign as Maine Athletic Conference champion snapped by Saint Joseph’s College last season.

“One of our teammates has a picture of St. Joseph’s taking down the nets from last year and we have the clippings from them winning the conference, so we’re a lot more hungry than we’ve been in the past,” said the 6-1 Rivera, who relishes the idea of a more uptempo attack.

Even though this is a transitional year, with Husson joining the new Sunrise Conference along with Fisher College, Lyndon State College, and the College of St. Joseph’s (Vermont), the emphasis hasn’t changed.

“We have high expectations because over the last 34 years, our average record is 21-7,” Caruso said. “We won the MAC championship three years in a row and six of the last nine years, but I think we got a little complacent last year.”

Husson will be in the Sunrise as an NAIA-NCAA member this season and then go strictly to NCAA Div. III next year as a member of the North Atlantic Conference.

“We’re very hungry and very determined,” Fletcher said. “We’re itchy to get started because we have some revenge games on the calendar that we’ve circled, X’ed, and highlighted … Anything else you can do to them.”