Men’s basketball will play their first playoff game in 11 years tomorrow

Tanner Overby ('28) goes up for a basket against Puget Sound on Jan. 10, 2026 in Cone Field House. Photo courtesy of the Willamette Athletics Department.

The 2025-26 season has been nothing short of historic for Willamette men’s basketball. The team’s regular season record finished at 15-10, their best since at least the 2006-07 season. Last week, they secured a place in the conference tournament for the first time since 2015. They finished the regular season at No. 3 in the conference, up from dead last at the end of the 2024-25 contest. They will play the Puget Sound Loggers at 5:30 p.m. on Friday in Spokane.

The ’Cats this year owe a large part of their success to Tanner Overby (’28), who is averaging 24.8 points per game (PPG) and shooting over 53% from the field. He is currently on track to break the Willamette single-season PPG record, which hasn’t been broken since the 1990-91 season. He leads the Northwest Conference (NWC) in PPG by a wide margin, with No. 2 Anthony Hrobka of Pacific averaging 20.7 PPG. Overby’s rise in the stat sheet has been meteoric. Last season, he saw the court 21 times but scored only 61 points. In the 20 games of the 2025-26 season so far, he has 496 points.

“Of our 10 players averaging double digit minutes this year only one averaged double digit minutes last year,” head coach Mike Lenahan wrote in an email to The Collegian.“We came into the season picked last in the conference and I think that was due to having so many student-athletes in new roles, but we knew we had a talented group and knew the identity we wanted to create of relentless pace, competitiveness and togetherness,” he wrote.

The fast-paced Willamette leads the conference in PPG with an average of 82.6, but they also give up the third-most points per game, a statistic which they’ll need to clean up as they head into the tournament to face the most offensively efficient teams in the NWC. 

Men’s basketball faces the No. 2 Loggers in the conference semifinals on Friday, Feb. 27. The ’Cats split their regular season series with the Loggers, losing their first meeting 63-93 on Jan. 10 and winning the second 88-78 on Feb. 6. 

The difference maker in both games was shot efficiency: in the first matchup, the Loggers absolutely dominated the Bearcats in shot percentage, going 56.4% from the floor and 50% exactly from three. The ’Cats, on the other hand, shot 25.8% from the floor and 12.5% from three, making just three of 24 attempts. 

These stats were flipped in the second game between the two, in which the Bearcats made 54.9% of field goals attempted and a whopping 57.1% of threes attempted to the Loggers’ 41.8% and 38.5%, respectively. “The team has totally bought in and just tried to get a little better at our identity each day, and when you combine that with the love they have for each other and how hard they play for each other we've been able to improve a lot over the course of the season,” Lenahan wrote.

The Bearcats have been in excellent form in recent weeks, having lost just one of their last five games, and in those five games they’ve averaged a 45.92% shot percentage, around 2% better than their season average. If the ’Cats can maintain their good form and shot selection, they’ll be able to cruise past the Loggers for a chance to win the NWC tourney for the first time since 2000.

In the other semifinal, hosts No. 1 Whitworth will take on the defending champions No. 4 Lewis & Clark. Last year, the River Otters shocked the Buccs to win in an identical semifinal matchup, having finished in last place the season prior.

The Student Athlete Advisory Committee will send the team off to Spokane at around 9 a.m. this morning. The game will be broadcast through FloSports, which can be accessed through the Willamette Athletics site.

“The most exciting thing about making the playoffs … is we get to make another week of memories together with this group,” Lenahan wrote.