Now a junior, point guard Thomas Wilder finds himself as the veteran among a young and inexperienced squad.
Wilder left his senior year of high school to go from playing in the Amateur Athletic Union to play basketball at Quakerdale Prep in Iowa, a post-secondary basketball prep program.
“It helped me a lot. I wasn’t highly recruited out of high school, a lot of teams slept on me. [Western] was actually my only offer. I left my senior year of my original high school then went to Quakerdale and that helped me become more responsible and learn how to fend for myself,” Wilder said.