For senior guard Armon Harried, the work is never-ending. Entering his second season as Binghamton’s highest-scoring returning player, Harried emphasized how he has continued to fine-tune his game to prepare for the 2023-24 season.

“The grind has never gotta stop,” Harried said. “You gotta keep working because the season is coming around fast. You’re already back for this again, so that was just a natural grind that I was on.”

Harried transferred to BU in the fall of 2022 from Canisius. He scored an average of 11.2 points and 4.5 rebounds while playing an average of 29.8 minutes per game during his final year for the Golden Griffins. Harried expressed how the people at BU helped make his transition to the Bearcats’ program smooth and why that’s important.

“That’s the main thing that you look for in this business because, at the end of the day, it is a business,” Harried said. “And within that, you find good people that can help you and shoot straight with you and tell you exactly what you need to do to be successful and what is expected of you within the program.”

After starting the season on the bench due to injury, Harried saw his first minutes on the court for Binghamton in December and had a strong stretch of games which were described by the guard as his “Bearcat moment.” During this stretch of games, Harried posted a 12-point and 14-rebound double-double performance in a win over Oneonta on Dec. 17 alongside a stat sheet of 25 points, eight rebounds and two blocks in 38 minutes against Cornell on Dec. 29.

“Being in the dog fight at Fordham was a good thing … for me, for coming back from injury,” Harried said. “It’s a good dog fight, then going onto the Cornell game and then the Bryant game. That stretch of games probably did me well. And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m here. I’m getting my feet under me and I’m learning these things.’”

With the Bearcats earning the fifth seed going into the America East (AE) playoffs, Harried would get his first taste of AE playoffs back home in Maryland when the Bearcats visited UMBC for its AE quarter-final matchup. Harried described how he felt to have been a part of BU’s 67-65 overtime win in the AE postseason.

“I got a chance to play in my hometown, which was UMBC, so that was good,” Harried said. “My family got to come which was really nice, and I had to adapt into a role to help my team win that they needed me to do. So that was like, shut down defensively and chase these people around and that’s what I did. So it was a lot of sacrificing, doing what’s best for the team and for the greater good.”

Harried finished his inaugural Bearcat campaign averaging 11.8 points, 2.0 assists and a team-leading 6.3 rebounds in 32.9 minutes per game. With the departure of senior guard Jacob Falko, this leaves Harried as the top returning Bearcat scorer. Now a tri-captain for the squad, Harried expressed that he has been focusing on how he can make the necessary plays to help the Bearcats win games.

“For me, personally, there’s no replacing Falko,” Harried said. “So what can [Harried] do to help us win? And the thing is that we have so many players, it’s more than just if I’m gonna score 17 points per game or some odd number of points. It’s not gonna attribute to winning. It’s more so whatever is necessary to win, so I’m gonna make the … plays that play into winning and then that [scoring] role will be filled if you’re winning.”

With Falko gone, Harried’s new partner-in-crime will be a new transfer to the team — graduate student guard Symir Torrence. Torrence brings with him a personal connection to Harried, having been a member of the same Syracuse Orange team that Harried’s father once played for.

“When I first met him, I met his father and me and his father talked about my dad’s time at Syracuse,” Harried said. “Then me and [him] had a little conversation about my father and the Syracuse system so we bonded over that. That has been one of the things that is just there and that’s a bond that’s there between two people.”

With regular season play on the horizon, Harried left one final message for everyone who will be following the Bearcats this season.

“We see their energy, and we know they’re waiting patiently for something to happen,” Harried said. “And you best believe we are gonna try our hardest to get it done. We have something in store for them every time we step on that court.”