Junior center Miles Goodman plays basketball during a practice Oct. 12 at College Park Center. Goodman averaged 3.4 points per game during the 2025-26 season at UTA.
Last year, UTA men’s basketball went 18-14, including 9-9 in conference play, and were knocked out of conference contention in the tournament semifinals.
The Mavericks now enter head coach KT Turner’s fourth season in Arlington with essentially an entirely new roster, with 12 of last season’s 14 players gone, mostly by way of the transfer portal.
“Losing guys, that’s just part of the lay of the land right now,” Turner said. “Especially if you have good players, guys from higher levels are going to come take them.”
Just two players stayed from last season: junior center Miles Goodman and redshirt sophomore forward Stoney Hadnot.
Goodman played about 13 minutes per game last season and was the team’s sixth-best rebounder, grabbing just under three per game. Meanwhile, Hadnot didn’t make an appearance last season, using his redshirt year.
“It was awesome that they stayed,” Turner said. “It was two guys that we really wanted to stay in this program; both of them can really help this program. They’ve been in the program and they know how we do things on and off the court.”
Turner replenished the roster in mostly the same way it was depleted, through the transfer portal.
One of the team’s top acquisitions was senior guard Noah Shelby, who enters this season with his fifth team in five years. His past schools include Vanderbilt University, Rice University, the University of Kansas and Texas A&M University.
Shelby said he came to Arlington due to a long-standing connection with Turner.
“I’ve known coach KT for a long time, since I was a little kid,” he said. “I knew it was my last year, so I wanted to go somewhere I didn’t think it was a gamble.”
The Mavericks also grabbed talent from the lower college ranks, such as sophomore guard Tristan Hankins and junior guard Jerimiyah Smith.
Hankins led Butler Community College in points and was second in rebounds last season, and said he chose UTA over conference rivals Tarleton State University and Abilene Christian University. He said his best trait is his drive.
“If I can’t score, if I’m just doing something terrible, I normally be going hard regardless,” Hankins said. “I make something happen throughout the game. If that is scoring, rebounding, getting others involved, defense, just something going to happen just from how hard I play.”
Outside the portal, one of the Mavericks’ biggest additions, in more ways than one, is junior forward Teodor Simic. Simic is listed as 7 feet, 1 inch tall and 250 pounds, and comes to Arlington by way of Skopje, North Macedonia.
UTA also acquired freshman guard Kajus Mikalauskas from Klaipėda, Lithuania, and sophomore forward Niko Bundalo, who played for the Serbian U20 team.
Turner credited former assistant coach Nemanja “Yogi” Jovanovic, who heads the Serbian U20 team, and current assistant coach Sean Stout for helping connect the international talent to UTA.
“That’s the way the game is going,” Turner said. “You’re going to see a lot more international guys coming over.”
The Mavericks will begin the season with a peculiar nonconference schedule. In addition to games against big Division I schools, such as the University of Arkansas, Colorado State University and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, UTA will play three non-NCAA teams and a Division III school.
Freshman guard Kajus Mikalauskas dribbles the ball during a practice Oct. 12 at College Park Center. Mikalauskas appeared in 34 games with the Lithuanian team BC Žalgiris in the 2025-26 season.
Turner said that in a time when so many teams are concerned about the NCAA Evaluation Tool, often called the NET, which takes into account the strength of a team’s schedule and record and is a major factor in postseason placement, the schedule is what the Mavericks could get.
“We get guys that we can feel like we can play with them or beat them. We really try to schedule those games,” Turner said. “It’s just like a puzzle. You got to piece that schedule together, and I really like our nonconference schedule.”
UTA will begin the first-ever season of United Athletic Conference basketball on Jan. 9. In addition to Tarleton State and Abilene Christian, whom the Mavericks shared a conference with last year, the conference includes three teams they’ve never played before.
This season will feature UTA’s first games against Eastern Kentucky University, the University of North Alabama and the University of West Georgia.
The team’s main goal, according to Turner and his players, is simple: win the conference and make the NCAA tournament. The team has only reached the March Madness field once, in 2008.
“If we don’t win conference champs, I wouldn’t feel like it was success for us, and everybody else got the same mindset,” Hankins said.
The Mavericks open the season at 7 p.m. Nov. 2 at home against the University of North Texas at Dallas.
@TyRoland