When veteran coach Kevin Reynolds took over the Point Park men’s basketball team in April 2022, he inherited a group that went 10-16 the season before. And two of those wins came via forfeit.

Plus, the program hadn’t had a winning season since 2015-16, so Reynolds had a tall task ahead.

The knee-jerk course of action, particularly with the transfer portal, would be to dismantle the roster and start over. But Reynolds and his staff decided to evaluate the players they had in search of material to start building a winner.

“There were good players here,” said Reynolds, who won 188 games in 10 seasons as Slippery Rock’s coach. “A lot of people thought we should just overhaul the whole roster. That’s easy to do. That doesn’t take any talent.”

With some of the holdovers forming the nucleus, Reynolds added a handful of transfers. The result was a 23-7 record last season.

This season, the Pioneers went a step further, going 29-2 and winning the River States Conference regular-season and tournament titles. That led to their first NAIA Tournament berth in 17 years. The Pioneers, a No. 8 seed, will travel to Henderson, Tenn., to face No. 9 Texas College (22-8) on Friday in the first round.

“We did it. That’s all I could think of. We did it. It’s over. Finally,” said 6-foot-5 junior forward Jo Valrie about winning the conference tournament. “We still have the nationals yet, but to get the conference championship, it felt great, especially in front of the home crowd.

“That’s the biggest crowd we’ve had since I’ve been here.”

Valrie was playing at a junior college in Arkansas when Point Park came calling. He was typical of the players Reynolds and his assistants targeted: players they felt were under-recruited or under-utilized. It helped that Valrie, who averages 20.3 points and a team-leading 10.1 rebounds, knew Pioneers assistant John Coakley.

Similarly, senior guard Jalen Stamps knew Reynolds from their time together at Division II Quincy. The 5-10 guard leads the team with 20.5 points and 5.3 assists.

Guard Jamisen Smith (13.9 ppg) came over from River States rival IU East. Junior Naz Fisher (6-10) was brought in from Division III St. Mary’s (Maryland) and paired with holdover Jags Jhawar (7-2) to give the Pioneers 13.3 points and 14.9 rebounds from the post.

“They have a knack for the ball,” Stamps said. “They want it. They don’t even ask for it on offense because they know they can just go get it. That’s the thing I notice with my bigs as a point guard. They’re not nagging for the ball because they can just go get it, and they know we’re going to get them the ball.”

Jhawar and forward Jordan Stowe were Point Park veterans in whom Reynolds saw untapped potential. Their biggest problem, Reynolds said, was their weight. Jhawar has dropped from 295 pounds to 246 and Stowe (6-5) from 240 to 188.

Nathaniel Van (6-3 junior, 10.5 ppg) and Denaez Hargett (6-5 senior) were the other holdovers who formed the team’s foundation.

Together, the seven players who play the bulk of the minutes give the Pioneers the complete package: scoring, defense and rebounding. Point Park leads the nation in rebounding margin (13.1) while holding teams under 40% shooting.

“I feel like that’s the biggest reason for our success this year, especially rebounding,” Valrie said. “People who hadn’t always done that, once they got onto that and everybody was on the same page, it really helped us.”

And when opposing defenses try to slow the Pioneers offense (86.5 ppg), good luck, said Stamps.

“You can’t just dictate what our offense will be,” he said. “It’s double digits across the board, so you have to respect everyone of us on the court because every one of us can go for 20-plus a night.”

It would be easy to look at Point Park’s quick turnaround and pat Reynolds on the back. But he deflects the credit to his players.

“Guys who love basketball. That was our No. 1 criteria in recruitment,” he said. “The real reason we are good is these guys love to play.”

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