After falling to Buffalo in the first round of the MAC tournament last year, the NIU men’s basketball team met and decided they weren’t satisfied.

“As far as our record and overall performance, I don’t think one player could say they were happy with our year,” sophomore guard Ryan Paradise said. “That’s stayed with us from last spring until right now.”

Paradise was cleared this week to begin shooting, after two surgeries for a wrist injury he received in last year’s pre-season tournament in Hawaii. Full recovery is still far away, though, he said.

“I feel like I’m making progress,” he said, “and the biggest thing is not to push too hard, too fast.”

Players have been working out since returning from spring break, senior Johnathan Byrd said.

“It helped that everyone was here this summer training pretty intensely,” Byrd said. “I like the way that everybody fits in on this team.”

Byrd is the only senior on a young team, which features six sophomores.

The team also features several new faces in two transfers and three freshmen.

Ben Rand, a sophomore guard from Rochelle, will not play this season because of NCAA transfer regulations. Rand transferred to NIU from University of Iowa this summer.

NIU’s other transfer, Cory Sims, transferred from Lewis & Clark Community College in Godfrey. Sims is allowed to play because he is coming from a junior college as opposed to another Division-I program.

“I think I’m meshing in pretty well,” the 6-foot-1 junior said. “The practices are a lot tougher, but it wasn’t a big surprise. I knew coming here, it would be tough, but it was a little tougher than I expected.”

The Huskies lost their top two point scorers and rebounders in Marcus Smallwood and P.J. Smith to graduation, leaving spots to fill this year.

“We feel a lot of people aren’t giving us a chance this year,” junior guard Anthony Maestranzi said. “But that’s something we’re definitely using as motivation.”

NIU coach Rob Judson said the team has developed a closeness both on and off the court this year.

In the spring, players got up at 6 a.m. to run and do individual workouts with smaller groups of players.

The team will begin a more strenuous set of workouts, what they call “the desert,” next week. The workouts will begin at 6:30 a.m. daily.

The team has not begun official practices yet, but usually does about 45 minutes of drills in the morning, an hour of weight-lifting each night during the week and two to three open gyms per week.

“We’re conditioning a lot harder than we did last fall,” Paradise said. “Each player is getting better, the transfers and freshmen are getting along, and we’re all getting stronger.”