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MEDIA DAY PRESEASON POLL
- Wright State
- Youngstown State
- Northern Kentucky
- Robert Morris
- UIC
- Oakland
- Cleveland State
- Green Bay
- Detroit Mercy
- Milwaukee
- Fort Wayne
- IUPUI
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Loudon Love – Wright State
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON ALL 1ST TEAM
Antoine Davis – G – Detroit Mercy
Amari Davis – G – Green Bay
Marcus Burk – G – IUPUI
Loudon Love – C – Wright State
Darius Quisenberry – G – Youngstown State
MEDIA DAY PRESEASON ALL 2ND TEAM
Algevon Eichelberger – F – Cleveland State
Te’Jon Lucas – G – Milwaukee
Rashad Williams – G – Oakland
AJ Bramah – G/F – Robert Morris
Naz Bohannon – F – Youngstown State
COMMENTS FROM DAVID
-Wright State and Northern Kentucky have been the class of the league for the last several years, and while the media thinks Youngstown can join the mix this year, both of those two will still be major players. Robert Morris and Fort Wayne also joins the league this year bringing the membership to 12. I have nothing against either of those programs, but cannot help wondering what the hell was wrong with just having 10?!
-Wright State is looking for their sixth straight 20+ win season, and have three starters back from a team that won 25 games a year ago, including Loudon Love. Scott Nagy has done a fantastic job leading this program and it would not shock me at all to see them go dancing again this year. They have a deep bench, a good frontcourt, and a solid backcourt.
-Youngstown State is coming off their first winning season against D-1 competition in what seems like a million years. With four starters back their experience should give them a chance to actually compete for a league title.
-Northern Kentucky has just one starter back, but I think they do have some guys that could step into new leadership rolls and keep this team toward the top of the standings.
-Robert Morris won 20 games last year, but as much as we at HoopsHD love the NEC, the Horizon is a much tougher league. This was a team that was robbed of a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament a year ago, but with three starters back they should be able to make some noise in the league this year.
-Oakland has a rather rich recent history of success, but not quite recently enough. They were just 14-19 overall last year and finished below .500 in league play. They have a great coach in Greg Kampe, and with three starters back and a solid backcourt we should see quite a bit of improvement out of the Grizz this year.
-Detroit Mercy has a fantastic player in Antoine Davis, who is one of the leading scorers in the nation. This team was ineligible for the postseason last year and now that they are past that we may see a renewed energy in the Titans this year.
-UIC returns two starters from a .500-ish team, and will likely be .500-ish again this year.
-Cleveland State did see a little improvement out of first year coach Dennis Gates last year and it wouldn’t surprise me if that continued in to this year. It has been a while since they have had a winning season, but they do appear to be going in the right direction.
-Milwaukee has four starters back! That’s the good news. The bad news is that they lost their final six games last season. But, to be fair, most were really close. There is not a whole lot of preseason love for this team, but they could turn out to be better than expected.
-With just one starter back for Green Bay, they appear to be in rebuilding mode.
-Fort Wayne and IUPUI are natural rivals! It is nice to see them both in the same league again! Gutting it out for….11th place.
NOTE FROM CHAD
– I personally am not very high on Robert Morris this year because there is a fairly significant step up in class from the Northeast Conference (whose champion often ends up in the First Four) and the Horizon League (a conference that often has its regular season champion at least marginally in the at-large bid discussions). On the other hand, I really think Detroit Mercy merits a ton of attention. While they may not win the league, I consider last year’s 23-loss season to be an aberration and, assuming they finally learn how to play together and not just feed the ball to Davis for a crazy shot every possession, they could finish in the upper tier of the standings.