USMMA
Pre-Season Report 2025
The Merchant Maine Academy is coming off a tough year last year finishing 10-16 overall and 6-10 in the Skyline Conference. They managed to squeak into the playoffs facing SUNY Farmingdale in the first round, unfortunately their season would come to an end there. They will be losing two of there key players from last season Drew Zalescik and Isaac Vencel. Zalescik averaged 21.8 points and 9.8 rebounds, one of the most dynamic players in the league it will be hard for Merchant Marine to replace him as they look to their extremely young team this season.
They are bringing back Clark Castleberry who was a solid contributor for the team last season. Castleberry averaged 10.1 points and 4.9 rebounds last season; he will need to exceed those numbers this season to get Merchant Marine back to the playoffs. Merchant Marine had a stellar defense last season making it extremely tough to get into the paint. Castleberry had 24 blocks and is a force in the paint. The team’s main problem last season was their inability to score with their opponents; they often failed to score more than 60 points. This season they are bringing in a mostly new team and will be interesting to see how they manage to replace the scoring and rebounding from last season.
Merchant Marine is led by Coach Rob Pryor. They will look to make it back to the playoffs and make a run this season. We will see how their veteran leaders can rally this young team this season and beat the odds. They open up against Bard on November 14th (there are 2 scrimmages prior to that)!
McGovern Sports and Media
Merchant Marine will go through a rebuild year, but will have a few surprising wins over top 4 teams.