After finishing last season with their best record in a decade, signs are pointing up for men’s basketball as they head into this year.
Entering the season picked fourth in the Atlantic 10 and earning top-85 national rankings in Kenpom and BartTorvik, there are legitimate expectations for the team to contend in the conference this year. Head Coach Chris Caputo said after a practice in October that being in the A-10 Championship hunt is a “privilege” and is something the team hasn’t experienced in the three years he’s been at its helm.
“For us, being relevant in basketball is really important,” Caputo said. “I certainly think that we all put a lot of pressure on ourselves every day to do a good job and be successful. The encouraging thing is that it’s been a while since we’ve been in this sort of conversation.”
There’s good reason for the team to have this offseason hype. After a 21-13 season that earned the squad a bid to the newly-formed College Basketball Crown, the team retained its best player — forward Rafael Castro — who led the team in scoring last year and earned a Second Team All-A-10 nod.
Castro, who transferred from Providence College last offseason, averaged over 10 minutes a game for the first time last year, with his strong play in the paint and consistent scoring immediately making him one of the conference’s top players. This year, his paint dominance makes him a contender to be GW’s first Player of the Year since Shawnta Rodgers in 1999.
The team also welcomes an impressive crop of transfer players who add significant depth to the roster. Tre Dinkins III will play his sixth year of collegiate basketball — which includes two at the junior college level — this season at GW. At A-10 rival Duquesne last year, he averaged 12.9 points per game and scored in double figures 25 of the team’s 32 games, a consistency in scoring he looks to bring to Foggy Bottom.
Dinkins is joined by former Hofstra University junior guard Jean Arangunen, former Western Kentucky University forward graduate student Tyrone Marshall Jr., former Northwestern University forward graduate student Luke Hunger and former Tarleton State University guard junior Bubu Benjamin.
Caputo said the transfer crop is a versatile group and gives him roster depth that will allow him to play with lineup combinations.
“The balance and the amount of guys who can make a play, and the positional size, we’ve got to do a good job of getting them — in a cohesive way — playing on both sides of the ball well together, but there’s lots of different options.” Caputo said. “That’ll be a challenge to try to make sure that we’re using our optionality while also not changing constantly.”
Perhaps the key to this year’s lineup is the return of redshirt junior forward Garrett Johnson, who missed the entirety of last season with a torn ACL. After over a full year of rehab — which also included returning to chemotherapy treatments for a benign hip tumor — Johnson said in an interview he feels “pretty good” heading into the season.
Johnson’s return will be key for the team’s success behind the 3-point line. In the 2023-24 season, he led the team shooting 40.3 percent from behind the arc. Last year, the team averaged a measly 31.7 percent.
But it’s not just on the court where Johnson’s impact will be felt. Junior guard Trey Autry said after the team’s exhibition game against Georgetown in mid-October that seeing Johnson, one of his closest teammates, return to the court was a powerful moment.
“It was really emotional, it was really happy, good emotions,” Autry said postgame. “But it was nice for not only for me, who’s been around him every single day over the last three years but for everybody else to come in and see all the work that he’s put in come to light.”
Autry is also a player who looks to be a key contributor to the team. Heading into his third season at GW, he’s the Revolutionaries’ longest tenured player and looks to be a part of a crowded backcourt that is also highlighted by Dinkins and redshirt sophomore guard Christian Jones.
After three years under Caputo’s leadership — which have been defined by strong non-conference starts before tumbles against A-10 teams — the head coach said he continues to stress the team’s efforts to schedule tougher opponents despite it being “increasingly more difficult to do that.”
The first real test for the team comes just two games into the season, on Saturday against the University of South Florida at a neutral site in Connecticut. The Bulls are Barttovik’s 63rd-ranked team and were ranked top-25 in the AP poll as recently as March of 2024. A big win this early would show these lofty expectations are backed up by substance and point the team’s trajectory even higher.
The team’s multi-team event, set to take place in the Cayman Islands over Thanksgiving, will feature matchups against top mid-major programs like McNeese State and Murray State universities. Winning games like these will give GW a chance to establish itself as a premier mid-major program this season — on par with, or even better than, a team like McNeese, which has reached the last two NCAA Tournaments.
But far and away the team’s best opponent is the University of Florida — the reigning national champions — whom GW is scheduled to play on Dec. 13 in Sunrise, Florida. The matchup with the Gators will be the team’s last Division I game before conference play, which is marked by nine nationally-televised appearances, including a Feb. 27 Friday night ESPN-aired game against Dayton, their first in eight years.
These TV spots and premier matchups are significant, signaling a program on the rise and a team that thinks it’s ready to make the jump into contention. For Caputo, he said he’s going to work to handle the expectations and make the most out of what this team can be.
“Even to be picked in the top four, it’s the first time in ten years in our league,” Caputo said. “To to be in that situation is a privilege, and pressure is a privilege, and we’ve got to handle it properly while not letting it drive us crazy.”
