In just his first season as both the Goshen men’s basketball head coach and as the Goshen College athletic director, Dwight Gingerich has found more wins than all of the 2024-25 season in just four months. A member of the Iowa Basketball Hall of Fame, Gingerich began practices and coaching on Sept. 15, 2025, but the team remains in search of what would be their first conference win in three years.

Coming off a season where Goshen fans saw just five wins amongst the 27 game season, the team has managed to find seven wins in this one already. This historic preseason has been the winningest since the 2011-12 season, where the Maple Leafs went undefeated in preseason, 8-10 in conference play, and 18-13 overall. 

This season, the team faced a stretch of defeats lasting five straight games from Nov. 19 to Dec. 6, four of which were to conference teams. Despite the five game losing streak, the Leafs were still scheduled to travel to Florida during the academic break between semesters. “It’s something that Goshen’s been doing every two years,” Gingerich said. 

The first of the two-game trip was against New College of Florida, and despite the long travel, Goshen picked up a resounding win, 96-80. The second game during the trip was a lot closer, with the game extending to a period of overtime and was eventually won by only one point. 

Braden Allen, junior forward, and captain of the team, said, “I wouldn’t say our mindset was different [going into the Florida games] … but we were definitely trying to win it.”

Junior point guard Kamren Williams said, “Sometimes we get big-headed, even though we shouldn’t be … so that’s why we went to overtime.”

Allen said, “We had a couple of days after that to just hangout, go to the beach … so we didn’t want to dwell on a loss … it felt good to get that last win in Florida.”

With the Leafs picking up both wins in Florida, returning meant it was time for the team to focus on the rest of the season. Having a cohesive team, especially one that can rely on bench players to perform at a high level is an important aspect of a successful season. Gingerich said, “We have different guys that have stepped up and really helped the team … it feels like we have a number of guys that can contribute.”

The players look forward to the rest of the season and to picking up the first conference win since the 2022-23 season. Williams said, “We should’ve had [a conference win] last game, it was a hard fought game, we lost by 10.”

The men’s basketball team will return to the Ruth Gunden Gymnasium on Jan. 17 to face off against Grace College.