The Three Rivers men's basketball team opens the season with one of its toughest opponents on the calendar.
Tallahassee (Fla.), ranked 13th in the preseason NJCAA poll, will visit the Bess Activity Center at 7 p.m. Friday in the season opener for both teams.
"They are consistently a top 10 team in the country," Three Rivers coach Gene Bess said. "This is probably the toughest opener we've had around here, so it is a great challenge to say the least."
The Raiders will also host Link Year Prep on Saturday to comprise its First Midwest Bank Tournament of Champions Classic schedule.
Jacob Winston finished third in scoring for Tallahassee as a freshman with 10.3 points. He started 19 games and averaged 3.8 rebounds.
Winston, a 6-foot, 6-inch guard, averaged six 3-point attempts per game as a freshman and made 36 percent, about the same as the Raiders' Gabe Grant.
Tallassee's only other returning sophomore on a team with nine sophomores is Leon Freeman-Daniels.
As a freshman, the 6-4 forward started 14 games and averaged 6.1 points and 3.6 rebounds.
Coming off a 24-7 season where it, like Three Rivers, lost in the district championship, Tallahassee has a squad with nobody taller than 6-9 and one player bigger than 220 pounds.
"My two coach Brians, they've studied them from last year. Same coach and different personnel, but we have a reasonably good idea of what they do," Bess said.
Bess added that last year's tape showed Tallahassee running a conventional offense with lots of ball screens and plays designed to get its best shooters open.
"They have a great point guard from what I hear so they will be hard to put pressure on," Bess said.
The Raiders had everyone practicing this week after suffering numerous injuries during the preseason.
"We've practiced with six (players) three, four times. It's really hard to have a decent practice when you don't have 10-12 players," Bess said. "We'll probably start our three sophomores (Aidan Saunders, Jeffery Porter and Ludy Kayouloud) and I don't know who the other two are. We probably won't know until we see our shootaround."