Missouri Military Academy’s goals for the season should be easy to remember.

The Colonels have their three season goals displayed on the wall in their gym so they can have a good follow-up to last year’s 10-15 team, which was the program’s first double-digit-win season in three years.

Head coach Roger Siwak is back after beginning his coaching tenure with MMA started last season. He said he believes the key to an improved Colonels team this year is emphasizing the intangibles, which are shown on a poster on the gym wall.

“The first few days of practice, we hit the intangibles hard,” Siwak said. “Our intangibles are we want to be the hardest workers, the most disciplined and the most coachable. We want to get our culture right. Last year, we could’ve won maybe a few more games if our culture was right.”

Siwak said that ideal culture includes consistently working harder at practice and being closer as teammates. Everything has been viewed as whether it’s a “culture fit,” like if a player is sprinting up and down the floor, and the tangibles, or results on the court, should emerge from there.

The effort up and down the floor is particularly important, Siwak said, as he wants MMA to be good in transition, close out on rebounds and limit turnovers. Accomplishing all this will give the Colonels more chances near the rim that they will hopefully make.

“We call that a red zone (near the basket),” Siwak said. “We want to get to the red zone on offense. We want to be a transition team that does fundamentally well on defensive rebounds.”

Siwak said getting to know teammates on the court takes time as it is not the same thing as if the same cadets know each other from the barracks or the classroom. There will be plenty of Colonels on the team this year with little varsity experience so they will need time to gel.

Senior Nathan Dempsey is one returner for MMA that has played varsity basketball multiple years and averaged about 11 points in the starting lineup last season. Siwak said he expects to start about three players who were in the program a year ago such as juniors Batbileg Bataa and Ky-mani Erskine. Senior Bradley Thumbi is a newcomer that Siwak said still brings good leadership.

With this group, Siwak doesn’t know how many wins will be in the Colonels’ record this season but hopes they are at their best late in the season.

“Our goal is to play our best basketball in February,” Siwak said. “I feel like our practices have been better and our intensity’s been better so I feel like our trajectory’s better.”