GREENWOOD, Ind. – With Kentucky Wesleyan College labeled as the early Great Midwest Athletic Conference men’s basketball preseason favorite, everyone else becomes the hunters to begin a new season.
The anticipated 2014-15 campaign officially is ushered in on Friday, Nov. 14, with seven teams in action.
The league’s coaches decided on Kentucky Wesleyan as the favorite with five first-place votes followed by Alderson Broaddus (three first-place votes), Cedarville and Davis & Elkins in the top four. Central State, Salem International, Trevecca and Ohio Valley, rounded out the poll, respectively.
As a result of a defensive struggle, Alderson Broaddus was able to grind out a compelling 65-61 win against Kentucky Wesleyan in the championship final and both teams retain some key personnel coming in this year.
Preseason is in full swing around the league and exhibition games will be a good gauge for the G-MAC coaching staffs of where their programs stand before heading into the regular season.
Alderson Broaddus - The buzz surrounding the Battlers is real as they embark on a quest to repeat as the defending conference tournament champions following an impressive 24-5 season overall with a 13-1 run in the league schedule.
G-MAC Player of the Year/double-double machine Adam Kline (14.4 ppg, 10.9 rpg) was a handful for the opposition and a primary tool in the arsenal for G-MAC Coach of the Year Greg Zimmerman.
But Zimmerman and Alderson Broaddus will have to replace the All-American Kline with considerable depth still on the roster. All-conference performers Malcolm Tatum, Richard Lemon and Thylas Perkins, are back in the fold as they look to embrace an elevated role.
The first-teamer Tatum led the team in scoring at 14.5 points per game and was near automatic at the charity stripe, hitting 88 percent of his free-throw attempts to lead the G-MAC. Perkins contributed over a dozen points per game.
Lemon was also a double-digit scorer at nearly 12 points per contest and the Battlers outscored their opponent by an average of almost 12 points per game while averaging over 77 as a team.
Cedarville - Senior standout Marcus Reineke solidified himself as a top-five scorer in the league, leading the Yellow Jackets’ offensive attack with 18.6 points per game. It’s the little things that Reineke has refined in his game that will make him more dangerous than ever this year, including his improved cerebral ability to read and free himself from screens.
Head Coach Pat Estepp is poised to recapture the program’s form that captured 22 wins in 2012-13. Last year, Cedarville started out of the gates a little slow after a double-overtime win followed with an 11-game slide due to a challenging non-conference schedule. CU finished 7-7 in the league and closed the year by winning five of its last seven games.
The Yellow Jackets have a strong senior class of five this year along with Reineke and the team’s third-leading scorer Jason Cuffee (10.4 ppg), who was fourth in the G-MAC in assists.
Gone is part of the interior muscle that Brian Grant (11.1 ppg, 6.7 rpg) was able to provide and Estepp will be looking for some bodies underneath to step up.
Central State - One of the highest scoring programs in the G-MAC and the nation has the ability and talent to duplicate the same kind of production under fresh hire first-year head coach Joseph Price.
Price brings experience and a pedigree from a handful of NCAA Division I programs including Morehead State, where he worked with Team USA’s FIBA summer star Kenneth Faried (Denver Nuggets).
The Marauders were 18-11 last year with a 9-5 record in the league with now-departed LeDonte Body pumping in over 18 points per game. Anthony Rule (11.9 ppg) is also a big contributor who is not back for the Marauders, but Wisconsin products Raheem Lemons (11.1 ppg) and Tre’ Edwards (10.5 ppg) are more than capable of picking up the slack.
As Price tinkers with his personnel on the floor, diminutive guard Masceo Harmon (10.9 ppg) will also be a key factor moving forward.
Harmon led the league in assists, was seventh in free-throw percentage and third in assist-to-turnover ratio and ninth in minutes played. The talented senior directs traffic and ignites the potent Central State offense.
Davis & Elkins - The biggest question surrounding Davis & Elkins and head coach Chris Cottrell swirls around replacing the G-MAC’s leading scorer, Devin Miller (19.4 ppg). Cottrell’s 2014-15 roster is guard heavy and predicated on youth with 12 of his 14 players classified underclassmen.
Cottrell has brought in talent from all points of the country (seven states, one country) while looking to build off of a 13-17 record last year. The G-MAC coaches predicted further success this year after they picked the Senators to finish fourth in the league after D&E fell in the semifinals of the conference tournament.
Juwan Strothers is the team’s top returning scorer at over 10 points while Serbian forward Aleksandar Vasiljevic crashed the boards for seven rebounds per game, fifth in the league.
The Senators were the best three-point shooting team in the league this year and it’s worth observing if they can stay among the elite again. Miller shot just under 40 percent from long range, but departed marksmen Wesley Sprinkle and Brian Dixon were even better.
Cottrell will look to gradually integrate a class of six freshmen into the rotation as the year progresses.
Kentucky Wesleyan - For Kentucky Wesleyan, the consolation of being the conference tournament runner-up leaves little question about any additional drive or incentive needed to live up to the top preseason billing this year.
The Panthers are loaded beginning with first-team all-conference guard Ken-Jah Bosley (16.2 ppg), who is an electric talent as the 2013-14 G-MAC Freshman of the Year. The 6-1 guard can do it all – score efficiently, make free throws and defend (more than one steal per game).
As a true freshman, Bosley was a nightly threat to score over 20 points per game and went five games straight scoring 20 or more early in the season. He showed out for a season-best 26 points against Trevecca.
Iconic head coach Happy Osborne will miss two of his top scorers, Lonnie Hayes (18.8 ppg) and Dominique Dawson (9.5 ppg). Hayes scored 57 points against Lake Erie in just the second game of the season last year.
Devin Langford, a 6-7 swingman, transferred from the University of Illinois and averaged nearly 11 points and six points per game.
Another intriguing Division I transfer rivals Milwaukee Bucks’ forward Giannis Antetokounmpo for one of the toughest names to pronounce as 6-11 Nigerian big man Ifeaynichuykwu Ude joins the program from Southern Mississippi.
Ohio Valley - The absence of graduated senior and BYU-Hawaii transfer Sequan Lawrence (19.0 ppg, 7.3 rpg) leaves a considerable scoring void to replace in the Fighting Scots’ rotation.
Lawrence was the third-leading scorer and rebounder in the league last year for a team that battled, but endured a 4-23 season.
Mike Snell returns for his seventh year at the helm of the program and based on the preliminary roster, has plenty of depth at his disposal going into a new year.
Senior guard Jerry Macon Jr. is the leading returning scorer at over 11 points per game and he will be counted upon to match and exceed his junior year production.
OVU is will be trending upward and the Fighting Scots should get credit for performing the regular-season sweep against Davis & Elkins and salvaging a split vs. Salem International.
Salem International - The Tigers can put up points and fill the basket in a hurry, ranking as one of the nation’s top-scoring teams last year en route to a 14-14 record. SIU toppled the century mark as a team nine times last year and ended its season with a loss in tournament semifinals.
Salem International emerged with an 8-2 start in 2013-14 and went on to average 92.6 points per game. An early meeting this season against West Liberty should be a track meet between both programs.
Walter Brock (19.3 ppg) was the top scoring threat, but that title shifts over to junior guard Alex Webb (12.7 ppg) with junior guard Jamal Robinson also a returning double-digit scorer for head coach Randy Unger.
The Tigers protected their home court with a 12-4 record but experienced struggles on the road to the tune of 1-9 last year. SIU found a good midseason rhythm by reeling off four conference wins in a row against Davis & Elkins, Cedarville, Trevecca and Ohio Valley.
Trevecca - A dozen new fresh faces (including walk-ons) will be featured on the roster for longtime head coach Sam Harris as the Trojans aim to bounce back from a 7-19 record last year.
In 2013-14, the months of January and February (two wins combined) were tough on the Trojans despite carving out wins against Salem International and taking down Central State in overtime. Trevecca struggled on the road at 2-11 while faring better at home for a 5-6 mark.
The returning core is in place with Byron Sanford (12.2 ppg/5.2 rpg), Matt Pond (4.1 ppg) and Christopher Elliott (6.8 ppg - son of Trevecca Athletics Director Mark Elliott), and Trevecca has two notable non-conference matchups: at Mark’s alma mater Vanderbilt and against Belmont.
For the Trojans, getting on the same page and integrating the class of newcomers, which includes seven freshmen, will be key while also having to replace the team’s leading scorer from last year, David Woodard, who was eighth in the league in points per game.