From the moment the schedule for the 2025 Strike King Bassmaster College Series presented Bass Pro Shops was released, Grant Pursifull and Ben Burns made it a goal to win the Team of the Year race.
After a phenomenal regular season, the Stephen F. Austin duo are now three days away from completing that goal and notching their names in the record books.
Entering this week’s College Series National Championship at Cherokee Lake in east Tennessee, Burns and Pursifull find themselves at the top of the overall Team of the Year standings with 731 points thanks to finishes of fourth, second and 16th in the three Legends Trail tournaments.
Their regular season success also earned them a spot on the HUK Bassmaster College All-American team.
With a good showing at Cherokee, Burns and Pursifull could become the first team since the College Series split into two divisions to win both a division TOY title and the overall AOY.
“It would be sweet to win everything,” Burns said. “We’ve had a chance to fish for some Angler of the Years in the past, and this one is really big.”
Lander’s Anderson Jones is second in the overall standings with 723 points while Lunkers Trail winners Zachary Helton and Blake Wheat from Carson-Newman University are third with 714 points. Emmanuel University’s Max Heaton and John Michael Ortman are fourth with 707 points and the University of Montevallo duo of Elisha Colley and Storm Clark are fifth with 698 points.
Whoever wins the overall Team of the Year title will claim one of the two remaining spots in the College Classic Bracket presented by Lew’s and the winner of the National Championship will claim the final spot.
Pursifull and Burns lead on the field may be pretty slim, but already clinching their spot in the Classic Bracket, details of which will be released at a later date, has allowed them to practice freely this week on Cherokee. They hope that will transfer into the tournament and help them make winning decisions when the time comes.
“We are excited to get out there. We have come out here with an open mind,” Burns said. “At Eufaula, we were pretty stressed out, so it is nice to be fishing with a free mind.”
In a season where weather affected the outcome of nearly every event in the Legends Trail season, Burns and Pursifull navigated the obstacles the best. They opened the season with a fourth-place finish during the one-day Harris Chain shootout before notching a second place at a higher than normal Smith Lake.
Severe thunderstorms shortened both tournament days at Lake Eufaula in Oklahoma, but Burns and Pursifull put together quality bags both days to finish 16th and edge out Jones.
Weather will seemingly play a big role at Cherokee Lake as well. Scattered thunderstorms are forecasted for each tournament day, and 1-2 inches of rain is expected to fall before anglers launch for Day 1, a stark contrast from the dry and brutally hot temperatures teams practiced in.
Bites have not been easy to come by, and Tennessee state regulations state anglers can only keep one smallmouth over 18-inches during the summer months, adding another curveball to an already challenging setup.
“It’s been tough,” Pursifull said. “The smallmouth thing is interesting. There are a lot of good smallmouth, but the largemouth are really what you want to find. I think the weights will be really tight.”
While teams will be able to bring two smallmouth back to weigh-in, Jones and other single anglers will only be allowed one scorable smallmouth per day, making a good largemouth bite that much more important.
“There are bites to be had, but they’ve been too far apart for me so far. You are going to have to make every fish count,” he said. “This is a smallmouth dominant fishery, which makes things complicated. I have a little bit of a handicap, but I’ll have to look past that.”
The Lander angler opened the season with a 10th place at the Harris Chain and nearly had a chance at winning Smith Lake before ultimately falling to sixth. He rounded out the year with a 14th at Lake Eufaula.
His shining moment came in Fort Worth, however, as Jones claimed the College Classic title at Eagle Mountain Lake and hoisted that trophy in front of the crowd at Dickies Arena.
“There have been a lot of ups, but several downs,” Jones said. “Overall it’s been a great season. I had the bites to pull it off at Smith Lake, but two good ones decided to find dock cables. At Eufaula I had a 6-pounder come off too, and there were a lot of mixed emotions that day.”
Despite the disadvantage in this tournament, Jones hopes he can ride the momentum of his regular season success and clinch a spot in the Classic Bracket.
“The goal is to win the tournament. If I have that goal, hopefully I can get close to it,” he said. “Doing the math, staying in the Top 16 would give me a good shot. I’m just a little unsure of what is going to go down. The main goal is to catch five bass, and if I get over 12 pounds I’ll be looking okay. I’m on to something to do that, I think, but the plan is scattered throughout the lake.”
Helton and Wheat, like the SFA team, have the comfort of knowing they are already All-Americans and locked into the Classic Bracket. Not only that, Cherokee is Helton’s home lake and Wheat has plenty of experience on the fishery as well.
“It is a blessing to already be in the spot we are in,” Helton said. “As soon as we saw this tournament was on Cherokee, we knew this was the one we wanted. I want that trophy that says my home lake on it. It doesn’t change how we are going to fish. We are going to try and win this sucker.
Claiming all three titles in their home region would be a special way to end their sophomore season.
“Getting a couple 4-pounders will really set you apart from the field,” Wheat said. “The local knowledge helps us so much because of how hard bites are to come by. If we could win and get overall Team of the Year, it would be one of the greatest years I’ve had fishing for sure.” Full coverage of the 2025 Strike King Bassmaster College Series National Championship at Cherokee Lake presented by Bass Pro Shops will be available on Bassmaster.com. Takeoff is scheduled for 6 a.m. and weigh-in will begin at 2 p.m. The final two Classic Bracket spots are on the line as well as the final slots on the All-American team.
