Photo courtesy of USF Athletics

NEW ULM — Even though he didn’t get a chance to play a single minute this past season, University of Sioux Falls freshman and Minnesota Valley Lutheran graduate Jake Kettner had an important year developmental wise for the men’s basketball team.

Kettner redshirted this past season for the Cougars, who finished the 2019-20 season 22-8 and 17-5 in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference (NSIC). They won their first conference postseason game but lost to Minnesota State University, Mankato in the second round.

Kettner knew going into the season that he was going to redshirt, so he worked at getting stronger. It paid off as he’s put on between 15-20 pounds of muscle and that will help him compete in a physical conference.

“I guess more of it was physically for me, which was the primary reason why I did redshirt,” Kettner said. “I had to get stronger and adust to the speed, but mentally, it’s a weird spot to be in where you know you’re not going to play. It’s hard to wake up every day and get ready for practices knowing that your primary job is to get the guys in front of you better. It wasn’t a bad spot for me to be in at all, I actually took great pride in it and next year when my time comes, I’m ready.”

Even though he didn’t get to compete in games, he learned a lot about the college game just from being at practice.

“It was a big eye-opener for me, you can only get so much from watching NSIC games, but actually being in practice every day, listening to what coach [Chris Johnson] has to say and then listening to what’s said in timeouts, it was a great learning experience,” Kettner said.

He said that he had already put on about 10 pounds of muscle by Christmas time and he noticed it. He started the lifting program last summer and kept working on it in the preseason as soon as he got on campus last fall.

“Absolutely, it was a huge improvement from where I was in the beginning of the season, as far as guarding people in practice and getting to the spots where I wanted to get to,” he said. “I think a big part of it, every day we do either conditioning or agility drills, so that helps out, getting that muscle and being able to put it to use.”

Kettner finished his four-year high school career at MVL with 1,821 points, which is fourth all-time in the City of New Ulm. Primarily a point guard at the high school level, he’s moved to the shooting guard or small forward position at the college level.

“It’s different because I definitely don’t have the ball in my hand like I used to, but it’s kind of nice in some sense because we have great point guards at Sioux Falls and they’re great at creating opportunities for me,” he said.

As of now, Kettner is working on skill development. He said the muscle will continue to add on as he keeps working.

“I’m still putting on muscle, since the season ended I’ve put on a couple more pounds and I study a lot of film,” he said. “Hopefully I can get into gyms and stuff and get some more experience playing.”

The biggest challenge for him is the fact that he can’t practice with teammates and put the extra work in with them because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s a lot different than actually being with each other and actually working on stuff, but our coaches for basketball do a great job of keeping us connected,” he said. “We do Zoom calls once or twice a week and our strength coach, we check in with him daily to let him know how the workout is going.”

He’s looking forward to his sophomore year and he’s also looking forward to competing against fellow Tomahawk Conference players Isaac Fink (Springfield, Augustana University), Dunwa Omot (MVL, Southwest Minnesota State University) and Jon Zinniel (New Ulm Cathedral, SMSU).

“It’s definitely super cool, I’ve been playing against these guys for five years and even knowing Zinniel since I was really young, it’ll definitely be cool,” he said. “I think it’s awesome for our area to have four guys from the [Tomahawk] conference, it’s really good competition and I think it just speaks volumes as to how good the Tomahawk Conference is.”

Overall, he felt good about what he accomplished this past season.

“It was definitely a different experience, there were times I felt that I could’ve helped our team out, but I have no regrets about redshirting at all,” Kettner said. “I just think it’s going to be a great next four years and this season is definitely something I’m going to look back on and be glad I did.”