After finishing the 2024-25 season with a record of 11-17, the San Francisco State University men’s basketball team will enter the 2025-26 season with a handful of new talent under head coach Vince Inglima.
This year’s team will feature 12 new players. Many players from last year’s roster transferred due to uncertainty of the SFSU athletic program because other athletic programs were cut in the Spring 2025 semester.
Some of the players joining the roster have never played in a Division II college basketball game before. That dynamic comes with unpredictability, but Inglima sees it as an interesting obstacle. Once the season starts, Inglima will determine whether the team can consistently bring the effort and intensity throughout the season, given the roster’s inexperience.
“I think we’re talented enough that at the end of the year, we could be playing really good basketball,” Inglima said. “We just don’t have that mindset and the experience that gives [the team] that grit to get through that high-intensity level.”
Mason Harris, a transfer junior forward from City College of San Francisco, is one of the new recruits.
“The difference between Division [II] to junior college is a big gap, whether it’s intensity, effort and just all around focus on the specific sport that we’re playing,” Harris said.
Harris said he believes that players at this level of college basketball are more willing to step into their respective roles and buy into their coaching. In contrast to junior college, he said players play with the intent of getting recruited to a bigger college rather than playing winning basketball.
Inglima has been coaching his team to be better at rebounding, in an effort not to give the opposition second or possibly third opportunities to score.
So far, Bricen Buciak and Milandev Chatha, two transfer juniors, have shone in Inglima’s eyes in the build-up to the season.
Buciak is a forward and spent his first two years playing for the Gavilan College Rams, where he averaged 16.6 points and shot 44% from the field. Last season, in a win over the College of Marin Mariners, Buciak scored 40 points and finished with 10 three-pointers.
“He [Buciak] plays with a bit of an edge,” Inglima said. He also touted Buciak’s physicality and aggressive play on the court combined with his ability to look for offensive rebounds.
As for Chatha, he averaged 15.2 points and shot 51.4% in his two seasons for the Skyline College Trojans. Last season, Chatha had seven games where he scored over 20 points.
“He’s [Chatha] proven himself so far in practice that he’s a very reliable, efficient scorer in the half court,” Inglima said. “So that’s been a nice complement [to] know that we can get him the ball in certain spots and get a quality shot.”
Another player looking to break out is sophomore guard Fed Pernell. He is one of the four players who are returning.
Pernell, a Richmond native, played sparingly in his first season for the Gators, but Inglima has seen improvements on the court, from taking quality shots to just playing in control. Injuries to other guards on the roster have given Parnell more opportunities in practice.
“[My] first season was kinda getting my feet wet, getting used to the league,” Pernell said. “This year, I feel like I’m more experienced, so I just wanna get out there, help my team, put up some good numbers, win games and just build on that.”
The Gators will travel south to face the University of California, Santa Barbara Gauchos for an exhibition game on Wednesday. The Gators’ season officially begins against the Dominican University of California Penguins in the West Region Tipoff Challenge on Nov. 14.
“We’ve been going hard now pretty much since August, since the first day of school,” Pernell said. “We’ve just been building and building and building every single day, looking to get better and better. We’re ready to play.”
