Coming off a 19-9 season a year ago and a Lehigh Valley Conference championship, the expectations for Liberty's basketball program is to always compete for some type of hardware.

The Hurricanes fell short of their district title hopes last season, still made another trek into the state tournament.

What will teams expect from this year's crop of 'Canes is yet to be seen, but head coach Chad Landis knows he returns two of the best players in the league in 6-foot-3 guard KJ Williams and 6-foot-4 forward Deshawn Oyeniyi. The bad part is that's all that really returns from last year's core lineup.

Seniors Martin Santana (guard) and AJ Kocher (forward) round out Landis' veterans, while junior guards Ludwin Gonzalez, Trenton Bishop, Darius Jones and Izaiah Avent compliment the roster.

The mixture of known products like Williams and Oyeniyi, along with unknown varsity players will certainly make things interesting to see who can step up for Liberty this winter.

"This year we have two key returning players from last years LVC Championship team, in Deshawn and KJ," said Landis. "We will expect a lot from those guys this year. We also have a handful of juniors who are very excited to step into the roles of the five key seniors who graduated. We hope to be a better defensive team this year, and continue to look to push the ball up the floor and play up temp basketball. If our younger players can mesh with the seniors early, we hope to be competitive with the other teams in the league from the start."

And if they don't mesh from the start, Liberty might be in for an uphill battle in the always competitive LVC. Added to the mix of returning players includes newcomers Deron Seaman (sr., guard) and juniors Anthony Miller (forward) and Jaevon Dobbins (forward).

For as much as Landis expects from his two stars, he also expects Miller and Gonzalez as players to watch for Liberty this year.

Expect Williams and Oyeniyi to get their share of points each and every night, but finding replacements in the backcourt and developing a third scorer is going to be vital for the Hurricanes moving forward.

At the moment, though, Landis is just keeping expectations simple.

"We just need to get better each day, because we have two experienced guys and will surround them with guys with little to no varsity experience," he said. "Our goal is to always play in meaningful games at the end of the season."