As the calendar flips toward another season of Savage Storm basketball, Head Coach Kelly Green and his team find themselves at a familiar crossroads balancing the new with the pressure of expectation. The 2025 Southeastern Oklahoma State men’s basketball team enters the season facing a demanding non-conference schedule designed to test their mettle early and define who they’ll become by March.

“We’re going to be playing three teams that were picked to win their leagues,” Coach Green explained. “That should give us a chance to see where we stack up against some of the top programs in our region right off the bat.”

Those early games, against teams chosen first in their respective conferences will be more than a challenge; they’ll be a measuring stick. The Storm will also face three other high-quality squads, making for one of the program’s toughest starts in recent memory.

Yet for Southeastern, the story this year isn’t just about who they’re playing it’s about who they’re becoming.

The Storm’s locker room looks different this season, filled with eight new players and only a handful of returners who logged significant minutes a year ago.

“We’ve got a lot of inexperience,” the coach Green admitted. “Probably four guys played quality minutes last year, and a couple of others got a few minutes here and there. So we’re a very inexperienced team.”

Still, inexperience doesn’t necessarily mean weakness. In fact, it could be the team’s biggest weapon.

“Our strength could be in our numbers,” he said. “We’ve got more guys that are very similar — different players have good days at different times. That can show depth, even if we’re still waiting for consistency.”

In the world of college basketball, turnover is inevitable. For Southeastern, that reset comes with both challenges and opportunities.

“You like to have retention so guys already understand the expectations,” Green said. “But sometimes it’s refreshing as a coach to have new people. The names and faces change, but the issues are often the same.”

That combination — fresh energy meeting familiar lessons — is what makes this year’s team intriguing. It’s a roster built on competition, with players still fighting to establish separation and consistency in practice.

Coach Green doesn’t shy away from the reality that the first few weeks could be rocky. But for him, that’s the point.

“Every time you go play, you’re going to learn something,” he said. “You’ll learn things you like, and things you don’t like and hopefully, the things you don’t like, we can fix.”

The Storm’s opening stretch may not define their record, but it could define their identity. For a team with more questions than answers, Southeastern’s edge lies in its depth, adaptability, and willingness to grow.

Come January, the wins and losses will tell part of the story but right now, it’s the building of belief that could make this season one to remember in Durant.