2016 CC Men's Basketball Preseason Poll
LANCASTER, Pa. – The Ursinus College men's basketball team was picked sixth in the Centennial Conference preseason poll, released Wednesday by the conference office.
Swarthmore, last year's runner-up, received 12 first-place votes and 164 points in a survey of the league's head coaches and sports information directors, while defending champion Franklin & Marshall was tabbed second with 151 points and the other 8 first-place ballots.
Johns Hopkins (116) was pegged third, followed by Gettysburg (106) and Dickinson (104) to round out the projected playoff field. The Bears were next with 79 points, with Muhlenberg (75), McDaniel (51), Haverford (31), and Washington College (23) finishing out the poll.
Ursinus' placement in the preseason poll is its best since the Bears were tabbed fifth before the 2013-14 campaign.
The Bears, coming off an 11-14 record overall and a 7-11 mark in conference play, appear to have all the pieces in place to make a serious run at their first playoff berth since 2009, with a promising batch of newcomers joining four returning starters. For 17th-year head coach Kevin Small, much of those expectations starts with the two guard captains in senior Matt Knowles and junior Brian Rafferty.
Knowles was on his way to a prolific season before missing the last 13 games with a knee injury. Up to that point, the sharp-shooter was averaging 16.2 points per game and making 50.4 percent from the field and 36.4 percent from 3-point range. Knowles, who reached double figures in all but one game last season and shot better than 50 percent from the field on seven occasions, scored 26 points at Division I Penn and poured in a career-high 29 against McDaniel one game prior to going down for the year.
Rafferty, meanwhile, led the CC in assists (111) and assists per game (4.4) for the second year in a row while pulling down 4.4 rebounds a night and improving his outside touch to the tune of a 40.0-percent success rate from distance, good for seventh in the conference. Rafferty, the first Bear to lead the conference in assists in back-to-back seasons since 2009 (Remi Cousart did it from 2007-09), is already eighth in program history with 230 dimes through the first half of his career.
The backcourt will also feature sophomore Eric Williams Jr., who drained 64 triples (5th CC) and shot 42.1 percent from beyond the arc (4th) as a first-year player. Williams Jr. connected on multiple 3-pointers in 17 games last season, including seven in an 84-80 shootout victory at Eastern on January 4. Sophomore Zack Muredda is back in the rotation after missing all of last season due to injury.
The Ursinus frontcourt features two of the top rebounders in the CC in juniors Remi Janicot (9.7 points, 7.8 rebounds per game) and Joseph LoStracco (10.2 PPG, 7.4 RPG). Janicot (5) and LoStracco (4) combined for nine double-doubles during the 2015-16 campaign, and LoStracco ranked fourth in field-goal percentage (56.7) and sixth in blocked shots (35).
Senior Patrick Mekongo (5.1 PPG, 4.1 RPG) is back in the middle after shooting 52.9 percent in 14 appearances last season, and sophomore swingman Matt Williams (5.7 PPG) figures to build off a solid rookie campaign in which he tied for third on the team in 3-pointers (28) and made them at a 36.4-percent clip. The front line should get a boost from the additions of junior transfer Zach Quattro, a pair of freshmen from La Salle College High School in Shane Stark and Ryan McTamney, and a 6-11 big in rookie Jake O'Neill.
The men's basketball team opens the 2016-17 season at the TownPlace Suites Tip-Off tournament hosted by Messiah College. The Bears take on Mt. St. Vincent at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, November 18. Ursinus kicks off its CC schedule on Tuesday, November 22 at Haverford.