Last year, in his first season as the Washington State men’s basketball head coach, Ernie Kent compared himself to a bear coming out of hibernation. Heading into his second year with the program, Kent compared it to entering the second round of a prize fight with a stronger ability to deliver more haymakers to the opponent.

With the official start of men’s basketball practices next week, Kent and his players spoke with the media Monday afternoon about the team’s approach for the upcoming 2015 season.

“The fans will see a stronger basketball team, a bigger basketball team, a faster basketball team and I can guarantee you a better defensively team,” Kent said at the press conference.

The Cougars enter the 2015 season with seven new players on the active roster: redshirt junior center Valentine Izundu, sophomore forward Derrien King, junior guard Renard Suggs, junior center Conor Clifford, junior guard Charles Callison, freshman forward Robert Franks, and freshman guard Viont’e Daniels. Four out of the seven new faces are transfers from junior colleges.

“It’s good (to have this amount of transfers) because we’re all around the same age so of course they look up to us,” redshirt junior guard Que Johnson said. “We have to show them the ropes of how intense practice, how intense Pac-12 (play) is because we (the returning players) know how hard those things are.”

Johnson is one of seven players returning from last year’s team that finished 13-18 (7-11 in Pac-12). With a full season under their belts in Kent’s system, the returning players enter this season with more confidence.

“Last year coach would show us tapes of his Oregon team, but it’s kind of hard to see it and do it, but now since we know how to do it ourselves we can show the new guys how to do it and that has us moving along faster,” junior guard Ike Iroegbu said.

Iroegbu added that this year’s team is the most talented squad he’s been a part of during his time at WSU.

Another player returning for the Cougars this year is junior forward Josh Hawkinson, who averaged 14.7 points and 10.8 rebounds last season. Hawkinson tallied 20 double-doubles in the 2014-15 campaign, breaking the WSU single-season record of 17 that stood since 1967.

Hawkinson said one of the biggest areas of his game he worked on over the summer was leadership.

“I didn’t feel like that was my role in my first two years since being an underclassman, but now that I am a junior I feel like I’m taking on a leadership role,” Hawkinson said. “Lead by example and vocally as well with my scoring and rebounding, too.”

The Cougars open up the 2015 season with an exhibition game against Lewis-Clark State on Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. in Beasley Coliseum. The game will not be televised.