The journey to playing basketball in March starts with a single step in November. For the Missouri Valley Conference preseason favorite-Illinois State University men’s basketball team, that means opening the season November 6 at Ohio University before tipping off the home schedule November 9 against Cornell.

As head coach Ryan Pedon begins his fourth season leading the Redbirds, this marks his 26th year in college basketball. A sense of anticipation that comes around every fall still makes the game special to him.

“It’s more a feeling that I get this time of year, the cooler air, the leaves changing, the anticipation, and the dawning of a new college basketball season upon us,” he said. “I feel really blessed. I feel really proud to be the coach here at Illinois State. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

With three of the team’s top four scorers back from last season, including two All-Missouri Valley Conference selections in Johnny Kinziger and Chase Walker, the Redbirds have been picked for success by several mid-major polls. To avoid added pressure, Pedon keeps his players focused on achieving daily objectives.

“If we worried about expectations and got consumed with that stuff, and we don’t, I think it would add a level of pressure internally,” he said. “I’ve addressed that with our team multiple times, and I just want our focus to be on our process and doing the best we can every day to become the best team we can be. I believe if we do that, the results will take care of themselves.”

That said, returning a lot of players during an off-season where nearly 2,700 players entered the transfer portal is a rare luxury not lost on Pedon.

“Why did these guys stay? I always start with the players. I think they’re high-character kids,” he said. “People will forget what you say. They’ll forget what you do, but they’ll never forget how you make them feel. I think they stayed, in a lot of ways, because of how they feel about what their daily lives are like, their growth, their development.”

The Redbirds closed last season with a 22-19 record, 10-10 in the MVC. It was the program’s first 20-win season since 2016-17. The year was capped by winning the 2025 Purple College Basketball Invitational championship in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Last year’s team hit 341 3-point field goals, a new Illinois State single-season record, breaking the old record of 301 from 2017-18. In addition, four Redbirds—Walker, Kinziger, Ty Pence, and Jack Daugherty—have been named “MVC Players to Watch.” Kinziger, a junior guard majoring in finance from De Pere, Wisconsin, said pre-season chatter isn’t what matters.

“We see that stuff, and we appreciate the rankings, and as a team we talk about it,” Kinziger said. “But they’re just expectations. We stick with what we’ve got in the room. We know that nothing is given.

“This is a hungry group. We work hard every day, and beyond the court, we hang out together and have fun. We’re just trying to be the hardest-playing, most competitive team we can be.”

With last season’s 532 and 510 points, respectively, Walker (fifth) and Kinziger (sixth) are in the top 10 for single-season scoring by a sophomore. Their combined 1,042 points make them the highest sophomore scoring pair in program history.  

Walker said it’s his teammates who make him eager to get back on the floor.

“We are true friends on this team,” he said. “Fans will see a team that plays hard, shares the ball, moves the ball, and a team that looks like it’s having fun and likes to be out there and likes to play for one another.”

A sports management major, Walker is a 6-9, 280-pound junior forward from Columbus, Ohio. With 90 offensive rebounds last season, he had the second-most offensive rebounds by a sophomore in school history and tied for sixth-most ever. As a player, he accurately describes himself as a physical, low-post presence who passes the ball. As a person, he said he can be kind of quiet, but he’s comfortable helping lead.

“First of all, we have three great captains in Brandon Lieb, Johnny Kinziger, and Ty Pence, and they do a great job,” Walker said. “As a leader, I’m an older guy who you can always come and talk to and follow. I’m a guy who will play hard and play the right way. I’m a guy who will dissect things he sees on the court and share that knowledge.”

While the season that counts begins for real this week, there were important lessons learned during pre-season exhibition games, especially in losses at Big Ten foes Illinois and Northwestern.

“I think those games exposed us in areas, some good and some bad,” Pedon said. “It exposed us a lot quicker than it would have had we not played that level of competition, and I think that’s very valuable.

“If you have the guts to play those games early on, you can learn a lot quicker, in my opinion, about your team and where some of your strengths and deficiencies lie. It’s really important that we take that feedback and apply it.”

Pedon is grateful to start the season with veterans he’s been through some battles with.  

“Any coach loves having veterans, right?” he said. “I love having guys in our locker room we’ve won and lost with because I think that builds character. It builds connection. Chase and Johnny are battle tested, and Ty Pence is another guy we’ve been through a lot with. The more shared experiences you have with the right guys, I think those can be very powerful for you in time.”

Home opener November 9 vs. Cornell at CEFCU Arena

Pedon is getting the word out to fans ahead of the home opener coming up Sunday, November 9, at 1 p.m., at CEFCU Arena that this Redbird team has the potential to rev up the fan base right away.

“I think there’s a level of excitement about this team that hasn’t been here for a while,” Pedon said. “I would encourage fans to come out, whether you’re a diehard or you’re a fringe fan. We need to convert the fringe fans to diehards. People who have joined our family love the way we’re doing it, and they love the young men who represent the University.”

Pedon said he’s believed for a long time that the University and Bloomington-Normal communities can play a key role in his team’s success.

“I’ve said since the moment I arrived that this community has the power to get behind this program, unlike very few fan bases at our level in the country,” he said. “It’s going to be a fun year. It’s going to be an exciting year.”