Wessler, Seahawks Lead CAA Preseason Honors

Here’s what Coach Takayo Siddle and Patrick Wessler had to say on Thursday

Patrick Wessler wasn’t unhappy on Thursday morning — he just didn’t see a reason to get too excited.

Not after coaches chose UNCW as the preseason CAA favorite, and certainly not after he was named the league’s Preseason Player of the Year.

“I mean, it’s an honor, obviously — I appreciate it 100 percent — but I’m also not putting too much stock into it,” Wessler said. “At the end of the day, we’ve got to go out there and do it as a team … it’s just something that we want to use as more fuel for the fire.”

Seated to Wessler’s left on screen, UNCW coach Takayo Siddle nodded along — clearly pleased with the businesslike approach amid sky-high expectations for the Seahawks.

In the age of social media accounts chasing viral posts with splashy graphics, UNCW’s lack of celebration was conspicuous as neither their Instagram nor Twitters accounts even acknowledged the preseason hype, which also saw guard C.J. Luster II also landing on the league’s All-CAA First Team.

Of course, that’s no surprise for a program that annually leans on toughness and a team-first foundation to compete near the top of the league.

“I think you can expect pretty much the same thing that you’ve seen over the last six years,” Siddle said.

“I think what you can expect is what you always see from us: a competitive group, a deep group, a team that’s versatile, a team that plays the right way. A team that is trying to get better each and every day, every game out, every practice out.”

Here’s a rundown of everything Siddle and Wessler had to say during their time with the media during Thursday’s CAA Media Day.

Q: Patrick, after your productive season, what kept you in Wilmington rather than entering the transfer portal?

Wessler:
I think it’s just the culture and my relationship with the coaching staff. I just think I really, really appreciated the opportunity they gave me, coming from the ACC last year, trying to find a new place where I could really make an impact, and just being able to really affect winning every single time we’re out there. I mean, that’s the biggest thing for me.

And so, I didn’t even really consider going in the portal — I wanted to stay here for my last year.

Q: What was the process of recruiting Treyvon Maddox, and how high is his ceiling?

Siddle:
I’ll answer the back part of the question first. I think he has an extremely high ceiling. While we have some very talented guys on our team, and the big fella will be featured in everything that we do, when you talk about potential—and I hate throwing that word around—but he’s got an unbelievable amount of potential to play for a very long time.

Right now, he’s going through it. He’s had some success. He’s had some really rough times. He’s embraced them both the same way, which is something that we talk about a lot with him. But we’re very confident that he can figure it all out, and we’re going to help him navigate through it.

But once he gets it, he could be really, really special for us. So, I think he’s going to be a key part of what we’re doing.

And the process was honestly pretty simple. My assistant coach, Kurt Kanaskie, had a relationship with Trey’s high school coach. So, we worked that a little bit. We were able to get him down on a visit pretty quick, and we were able to get the commitment pretty quick. So, some of these things happen that way, and we feel like we got lucky.

Q: UNCW had several major comeback wins last season. What lessons did you learn from those games, and how can those experiences help this year?

Siddle:
Let’s try not to do that again. I used to tell them that after every game that we came back and won.

But it shows a level of resilience, for sure. So, you can take that as a positive, for sure. But I think just trying to do things a little bit different within our process, trying to do things a little bit different so we won’t put ourselves in those positions.

And I think just having more, like I said, more versatile pieces, and maybe a little bit more youth in the program, I think maybe that can help in trying to do things a little bit different.

But we did that in 2022. I think we led the country in comeback wins, and I always wanted to stay away from it, and then these guys took me through it last year. Fortunately enough to win those games, but, yes, we’re trying to avoid that as much as possible.

But if it comes up, because we know we won’t be leading every game from start to finish, just being resilient, staying together, and trying to fight through that in-game adversity to be on the other side of it.

Wessler:
Yeah, and from a player perspective, some of the new guys that haven’t been here before, we can kind of talk to them, be like, “Look, we’ve done this before. We know what it takes to win.”

But I think it also speaks to our level of conditioning as well, because what happened in those games is teams would get up, and then we would just wear them down as the game went on, and we’d finish strong. So, I think it really speaks to that as well.

Q: After losing several key players, what standard do you hold this year’s transfers and returning players to?

Siddle:
Yeah, our standard is kind of like Mike Tomlin says: “The standard is the standard.” And we expect — and it’s a lot of factors that go into it, have to stay healthy — but our standard is to compete for championships.

We want to be playing that last day in D.C. and putting ourselves in a position to go to the NCAA tournament. I think everybody around here, that’s the expectation. That’s the standard. That’s what we’ve always held ourselves to. And even with a new group and some younger pieces, that doesn’t change.

Q: After entering last year’s conference tournament as the No. 1 seed and losing to Campbell, what can you take from that experience if you find yourself in the same situation this year?

Siddle:
Yeah, I don’t know if there was something that we did or something that happened that I’m saying that we need to change. I think our process is something that we’re convicted in.

But from a roster standpoint, we felt like we needed more versatile pieces, more pieces around Patrick that complement him. And we feel like we did that. We felt like we needed to get more athletic, more skilled, and we feel good about that right now.

So, I don’t think it was anything that happened or that we did different from the championship year last year. But all in all, it was an unbelievable year, a historic year for our program, and something that we can definitely build off of.

Wessler:
Just to kind of piggyback off what coach said, we reloaded. The guys we got out of the portal, some of our younger kids, they’re really good, and we’ve got a really versatile team, like he said. So, I think it’s just going to be a more complete attack this year.

Q: Patrick, after experiencing CAA play last season, how do you plan to elevate your game in year two and help UNCW sustain its success?

Wessler:
I mean, I think it’s just playing to that standard, like coach talked about, and just not having any form of complacency. It starts from the top, and it kind of trickles down to everybody that’s involved with the program. So, it’s just to continue striving to be great and win championships.

Q: What can we expect from the bigger matchups on your nonconference schedule, and what does it take to compete at that level consistently?

Wessler:
I mean, it’s just the experience of it helps. The guys that have been there before, we can kind of prepare the younger guys for it. So, we’ll be ready. We played in some really good environments. Obviously, Trask itself is really good, and there’s a lot of away gyms that are really packed out, too. So, I think we’ll be ready as a team, for sure.

Siddle:
Yeah, I think what we try to do, and I think every coach that you talk to, they just try to put together a competitive nonconference. You try to mirror some teams in your league with playing styles, and I think we’ve done a really good job of that.