Building from the ground up at the start of a new season can be refreshing for a team, especially one whose roster turnover rate has been as turbulent as Maine’s. Heading into 2014-15, the Black Bears have a new coach, a new team and a new plan.

The sheer volume of athletes transferring from Maine — including two of last year’s stars — was bad enough to land a pink slip in former head coach Ted Woodward’s mailbox. In his stead, Bob Walsh has inherited the helm of the Black Bears program for the upcoming season. Bringing Division I coaching experience as an assistant at Iona, Providence and San Diego, most of Walsh’s winning experience stems from his nine years as the head coach of Division III Rhode Island College.

During his tenure with the Anchormen, Walsh coached his team to eight consecutive NCAA tournaments, highlighted by an Elite Eight appearance in the 2007 edition of the Division III tournament. Joining Maine in the midst of an eighth-place America East finish, accompanied by a 4-12 conference mark, Walsh hopes to create a similar “championship culture” at a program that has never earned an AE title.

“We [have] got to develop a relationship with our players, our coaching staff, first and foremost, so that we can trust one another,” Walsh said. “And then we’re going to hang our hat on how hard we compete.”

To bring the Black Bears to the top, Walsh will need patience. Though Maine added Walsh over the offseason, the team lost a pair of leading scorers in would-be junior guard Dimitry Akanda-Coronel and would-be senior guard Xavier Pollard to transfer. Coronel and Pollard were just two of three Maine players to transfer in the offseason and two of four to request transfer papers. In fact, the lone returning senior that Maine will bring back to the floor this season is forward Zarko Valjarevic — who averaged 11.3 points per game last season — but who did not participate in either of the Black Bear’s exhibitions.

“I didn’t coach [Coronel and Pollard],” Walsh said. “We’re not going backwards, we’re moving forward. We’re starting at zero with our guys, and our personality and our talents and our abilities are going to merge. We got talented guys that were brought in and want to win.”

That motivation has been reflected in the Black Bears’ exhibition games. Despite suffering a five-point loss to Division III Southern Maine to tip off the season — a team that Walsh routinely beat while at Rhode Island College — Maine exploded in its exhibition against Husson. Facing their second Division III opponent, the Black Bears totaled 98 points to win the game by a 30-point margin.

Individually, sophomore guard Garet Beal led the pack against Husson, pouring in a game-high 26 points. In its loss to Southern Maine, junior forward Till Gloger also shot a game-high with 23 points.

Still, the season is young, and Walsh was hesitant in naming leaders to a team only bringing back nine players from 2013-14.

“Everyone on our team is expected to be a leader and make the people around them better,” Walsh said. “We have 15 guys on our team; we’ll have 15 leaders.”

And that all starts at zero.