DENVER - The University of Denver men's and women's basketball teams held their annual media day Tuesday in Hamilton Gymnasium. Head coaches Kerry Cremeans and Joe Scott addressed members of the media following an open men's basketball practice.

Cremeans said that reliance on veteran players will be key as the Pioneers seek success this season, including senior Paige Bradley (The Woodlands, Texas).

"Coming into this season, we will rely big on our veteran leadership," Cremeans said. "We just have one senior in Paige Bradley; however, we have a good depth in our junior class as well. Just to talk a little bit about our lone senior Paige Bradley. She has been voted preseason first team All-Summit League in The Summit League. As a point guard, she has great leadership skills, she's a heck of a player. We will rely on her to do anything offensively and defensively as well as just lead this team. And obviously the league has great respective for her as well."

Cremeans described the contributions she expects from her other players; every class will work together to reach the team's goals. The team will need to come together quickly as they will play National Championship contender Notre Dame later this month.

"Sometimes I scratch my head and think, 'gosh, what have I done?' But our team is extremely excited for this opportunity, as well as this program, to play Notre Dame. At the end of the day, it's the small battles that we will have won during that game that we will look back on as we get into the grind of the season of The Summit League. In January, February we will look back on that game and we will know why we played it."

Scott's team will also need to come together quickly, as he expressed that Denver's young team will need to mature to compete at the collegiate level.

"We have a little bit of a different challenge: we have three games in three days, which is going to be a major challenge for our team," Scott said. "We're extremely young, 13 of 17 guys are freshmen and sophomores. We're going to be possibly starting three freshmen, playing four freshmen. We're going to be playing three or four sophomores, and we're going to be counting on them a lot. We scheduled it this way on purpose, actually, to get a lot of information, to throw them into the fire, to see how they do and get a lot of information for us to then move in forward as we come out of our first three games."

Scott's other goal for his team goes hand-in-hand with maturing. He expects the Pioneers to improve every day and to become a team that wins at home.

"We've got all these young guys, and in some respects, we're starting over. A big thing that we did when we got here was become the kind of team that was going to be really, really good at home, so you could hang your hat on something and know you're going to be good at home. It gives you something to grow from and build from and get better all the time. That's going to be our plan, and we're going to have to stick with that because these young guys are going to have to grow up. We're going to get better day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, and if we can do that I know we have that ability. One thing I like about this team is our ceiling is really high. Every guy can get better and our team can get a lot better, so there's something we can work toward every single day and our guys know that."

The men's basketball players also weighed in on the season with members of the media.

Red-shirt senior Marcus Byrd (Highlands Ranch, Colo.) knows there will be a learning curve with such a young team, but he said the coaching staff is successfully helping the team adjust.

"Some of the strengths I would say are definitely starting from the coaching staff," Byrd said. "Really giving direction to people like where to go, what to do. Telling people to focus on their strengths in the game, so if people aren't necessarily great shooters, trying to get some drives… So I'd say the coach leadership has been great. From the players, everyone is kind of realizing that we have to come together as a team… Using our maturity from the older guys and knowing how hard games are, and trying to get the freshmen and the younger guys to realize that if we come together as a team we can beat anybody."

Freshman Thomas Neff (Arvada, Colo.) said that the team is already coming together.

"Strengths as a team, I think we play together really well," Neff said. "We have some pretty good team chemistry, and we have some guys that can really shoot it and some people who are really tough."

Ultimately, the players agree. Their goal is to get better every day.

"As a team, I just want to get better every day," senior Bryant Rucker (Frisco, Texas) said. "We have potential to be a great team, so getting better every day and showing progress every day [is our goal]."

Both teams will tip off their seasons Friday, November 13. The women will host Northern Colorado Friday at 7 p.m. MT and Weber State Sunday at 1 p.m. MT. The men will take part in the Cable Car Classic hosted by Santa Clara and will play three games in three days to begin the 2015-16 season.

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