Fans attending the Carthage men’s basketball team’s season opener at 2 p.m. today vs. Transylvania might be surprised to see four freshmen in the Red Men’s eight-player rotation.

Some people might view that as a sign of a difficult season ahead. If Carthage history is any indication, though, it could foreshadow an exact opposite scenario.

It was 10 years ago when freshmen Antoine McDaniel, Rob Garnes and Bart Fabian arrived in Kenosha. Four years later, the trio left having helped usher in the “Glory Days” of Carthage hoops with a 93-16 overall record (.853), three College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin titles and three NCAA Tournament appearances, including a trip to the 2002 Division III Final Four.

“That was pretty good stuff,” Carthage coach Bosko Djurickovic said.

Time will tell if this year’s eight-member freshmen class can come close to replicating that level of success, but with Tyler Pierce, Raul Guzman, Malcom Kelly (a Reuther graduate who served three years in the military) and Mitch Thompson in the top eight Djurickovic is optimistic — to put it mildly.

“These kids will not play like freshmen, and that is something that we’re very, very excited about,” Djurickovic said of Pierce (6-foot-5, 230 pounds) and Guzman (6-6, 250), who will form Carthage’s frontcourt and be joined in the starting lineup by guards Steve Djurickovic, Cody Hilton and Max Cary.

“They’re going to come in here and hit the ground running and they’ll complement Steve just beautifully. ... This is the best team we’ve had since 2003.”

Although they are nearly identical in size, Pierce is an “inside-outside” player and Guzman is an “outside-inside” threat who Bosko Djurickovic said could lead the Red Men in 3-pointers made.

Either way, it appears that Steve Djurickovic, the 2007 Bradford graduate and perhaps now the CCIW’s best all-around player with the graduation of Wheaton’s Kent Raymond, will have a formidable supporting cast.

Djurickovic, a D3hoops.com preseason second-team All-America selection, led the CCIW in scoring (27.6 ppg), assists (6.36) and minutes played (37.04) last season and is a two-time All-CCIW first-teamer. But as good as Djurickovic was, with an undersized lineup the Red Men “wore down” toward the end of the year, according to Bosko Djurickovic, and lost six of their final nine games after a 12-4 start.

“I think looking at the people that we played last year and the talent we had on the court, 15-10 (overall) and 7-7 (in the CCIW) was a pretty darn good year,” Bosko Djurickovic said.

“But you never like to finish poorly. You’d rather start badly and finish strong rather than the way we did. So that’s something that needs to be addressed, although I think that just the different people on the court (this year) will take care of that.”

(One player that likely won’t be returning this season, because of team violations, is guard Sean Fendley. A third-team All-CCIW honoree, Fendley averaged 14 points and was Carthage’s second-best 3-point shooter behind Djurickovic.)

If the Red Men can significantly improve their rebounding — they were outrebounded 876-750 last season — and their aforementioned freshmen progress the way Djurickovic expects them to, the 14th-year Carthage coach said, “We’re more than capable of being at the top of the league.”

Carthage’s last CCIW crown came in 2003, when McDaniel, Garnes and Fabian were seniors. Carthage was picked to finish third in the eight-team league in the coaches preseason poll.

, behind defending champion Wheaton and Augustana.

With an unselfish group that ranks among the best passing teams he’s ever coached, Djurickovic is eager for today’s tipoff.

“The last few years we’ve been guardedly optimistic. This year, we think we’ve got something (special) here and we’re pretty excited to get it started,” he said.