Brady Cummins had a breakout season for Colgate in 2023-24.

As Brady Cummins ’26 prepares for the upcoming season, things are looking much differently than they did a year ago.

Rewind to the summer of 2023 and Cummins, a native of York, Maine, was entering his second season with the men’s basketball team with a few goals in mind. 

After spending most of year one as a key reserve, Cummins was eager for more minutes. He wanted to become a starter.

He began the season on the bench. But as the season went on, his minutes increased, and so did his impact on the court. On Jan. 13, in a game against Bucknell, Cummins made his first start. 

“After my first year ended, I had a goal to start in my second year,” he said. “The beginning of the season, I was coming off the bench. I was fine with it. I had more of a role. I was a sixth or seventh man. Once I did start in the second half of the season, it felt great because that was the goal I set for myself. And I was still able to contribute to the team as I had done before. Achieving that goal felt good.”

He would go on to start 17 of the team’s final 18 games during the second half of the season – only missing one game due to illness – while helping Colgate pull off a 12-game winning streak that propelled the Raiders to the top of the Patriot League after entering conference play in search of its identity. They went on to win another conference championship and secure another trip to the NCAA Tournament. 

Cummins seized the opportunity to start and never relinquished the role. He evolved with each game. But he saved his best performance for big moments — like the Patriot League championship game against Lehigh.

He scored a career-high 19 points and finished 8-of-9 from the field. 

“As a player, in my development, that game was really special because it showed a lot of what I can do that maybe I didn’t show in other games earlier in the season,” Cummins said. “I think the more special thing was being able to do that with the guys and for the guys because that was our goal — winning the conference championship and making it to the March Madness tournament.”

Once the season was over, Cummins had checked off everything he sought to achieve in year two.

“Overall, I’m happy with the season — but not completely satisfied because you never want to be satisfied,” he said. “You want to keep pushing yourself to be better and continue to set goals. But I’m happy with how it went.”

Now Cummins is a junior. He has blossomed as a basketball player. He has new goals, and he’s eager to take the next step.

As seniors graduate and a new class of Raiders join the program, the landscape of Colgate Men’s Basketball is dramatically different than a year ago. For Cummins, it means a chance at a bigger role.

And Cummins knows it.

“My goal last year was to become a starter. I did that,” he said. “Now, it’s taking the next step. Becoming an all-conference player will be a goal of mine, which I think I can do.

“Entering my third season, it’s a bit of a different feeling because of the role I had this year compared to the role I had my freshman year,” he said. “Definitely more responsibilities come with it. Being an upperclassman, I’m excited for the challenge. I’m excited about the players on this team. I think we have a great group that can continue to push each other to get better. I’m excited about what we could become with quite a different team than what we had last year.”

Cummins said he enjoyed being a leader on his high school team, and welcomes the responsibilities that come with being a veteran on the roster. That opportunity will be there as the Raiders welcome five first-years to a team with only two seniors. 

This is also the first time since 2017 the Raiders won’t have a returning All-Conference player on the team.

Cummins came to Colgate after coaches saw him play with Brooks School, a private school in North Andover, Mass. After growing up in south Maine and playing for his local high school, he transferred to Brooks as a junior, which allowed him to play for a program with a reputation for sending its players to D-I schools. 

At Brooks, he met Sam Thomson ’24 who studied and played basketball at the school before coming to Colgate. Thomson gave him a tour of Brooks and told him what to expect. 

A few years later, Thomson would do it again, this time at Colgate as Cummins prepared for life as a Raider.

Cummins said the coaching staff’s belief in his abilities played a big part in his decision to commit to Colgate. 

“I could sense that the coaches really believed in me,” he said. “The way they talked, I could tell they saw a future for me here. On the player side, I really felt like I fit in with the team and the players.”

Cummins spent his first season watching from the bench as Colgate’s veteran core of Tucker Richardson, Oliver Lynch-Daniels, Ryan Moffatt, and Keegan Records led the team to another memorable season that ended with a NCAA Tournament bid. 

Cummins said he learned much about the game and being a college athlete from watching the veterans. 

“Coming in, I don’t know if how I approached the game was nearly as good as it is now,” he said. “My first year, I didn’t play a ton, but I played with guys like Tucker, Oliver, Keegan, and Ryan. Just from practicing with them every day, I feel like I developed so much as a player. I learned a lot about the way they approach the game and play. It really helped me this past season, when I got more opportunities on the court.”

As Cummins settled into a bigger role with the team in 2023-24, he also declared a major in sociology. It’s a topic that caught his interest after taking a few sociology courses. 

“I enjoyed those courses and saw myself being able to be successful in that major,” he said.

Overall, Cummins said he’s happy with how his Colgate experience has gone so far, on and off the court. Colgate’s small classes have been much to his liking after studying in a similar environment at Brooks.

Now he’s looking forward to two more memorable years at Colgate.

“I’m very excited about the upcoming season,” he said. “There are some unknowns with having such a young team, but that can be exciting. We have to keep that chip on our shoulder and can’t be settled in or anything like that and continue to move in the right direction so we can play to the best of our ability. We have a strong group that can go places if we’re all focused on the right things.”