Jackets Place Brown and Wolfrum on HCAC Watch List
GREENWOOD, Ind. – The Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference released its 2011-2012 HCAC Preseason Men’s Basketball Poll on Wednesday, with Defiance College being picked to finish fifth in the league.
GREENWOOD, Ind. – The Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference released its 2011-2012 HCAC Preseason Men's Basketball Poll on Wednesday, with Defiance College being picked to finish fifth in the league. DC placed a pair of student-athletes on the HCAC Players-to-Watch List, with Anthony Brown and Logan Wolfrum being selected.
Despite the fifth-place showing in the poll, the Yellow Jackets did garner one first-place vote as a hint of the potential in place on the 2011-2012 DC men's basketball squad. Defiance posted its fifth-straight winning season with a 13-12 overall clip last season and will return 10 lettermen and all five starters from that unit.
The Jackets saw seven of those 12 setbacks come by a margin of five points or less last season and will look to flip those tightly contested games into the win column this season in an effort to climb back towards a more prominent position in the conference standings.
Along with returning the starting unit, Defiance is bringing back its top-six scorers from one year ago, its top-five rebounders and its top-five players in minutes per game. The experienced lineup, joined with yet another exciting incoming crop of recruits by head coach Kyle Brumett, has the Purple and Gold primed for a run at its 27th conference crown on the hardwood.
Brown and Wolfrum will headline the roster entering the 2011-2012 campaign, as the explosive duo ended last year as the top scoring tandem in the HCAC with a combined 36.4 points per contest. The offensive prowess of Brown and Wolfrum earned them each a spot on the All-HCAC team last season, with Brown being named Honorable Mention All-HCAC and Wolfrum being voted as a First-Team All-HCAC standout.
Brown will enter his final collegiate campaign as a two-time All-HCAC performer, looking to build on his work as one of the top scoring threats in the league. The Glenview, Ill., native ranked fourth in the HCAC with 14.8 points per night as a junior and was second in the nation with a 92.5-percent clip from the charity stripe during the regular season. Brown also ended among the HCAC leaders by shooting 36.6 percent from three-point range and moved to just 95 points away from becoming the 44th member of DC's 1,000-point club.
Wolfrum also boasts a pair of All-HCAC nods in his two seasons with the Purple and Gold and enters his junior campaign as a candidate for HCAC Player of the Year and All-American accolades, after ending last season as one of only four NCAA Division III players to rank top-20 in scoring and top-35 in assists. The Defiance, Ohio, native led all NCAA Division III freshmen and sophomores and topped the HCAC with 21.6 points per game, while also pacing the conference with 5.3 helpers per night. Wolfrum's sophomore season made him the first player in DC's NCAA Division III era to log 500 points, 100 assists and 100 rebounds in a single season and moved him to within 145 points of joining the program's 1,000-point club.
Defiance will have plenty of options outside of the headliners of Brown and Wolfrum, as rising sophomore Ryan Hicks and seniors Kevin and Kyle Tietje will give the Jackets a strong trio of returning post threats. That potential starting unit will be bolstered by seniors Brandon Hoke and Justin Morris and sophomores Leroy Lewis, Josh Francis and Brandon Ray, along with 14 new faces to round out the 24-man roster.
The Jackets will have plenty of competition within the HCAC, with Transylvania netting five first-place votes en route to earning the label of preseason favorites to win the league's regular season championship. The Pioneers claimed 86 points in the poll and were followed by Hanover (78), Rose-Hulman (77), Manchester (75) and DC (58) in the tightly bunched top five, as all of those team's except Rose-Hulman took at least one first-place tally. The poll was rounded out by Anderson (76), Bluffton (47), Franklin (42), Mount St. Joseph (18) and Earlham (12).
DC will get things started on November 15, with a 7:00 pm game at Kalamazoo, before heading east for the North Coast Athletic Conference and Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Tip-Off Classic on November 18 and 19 in Wooster, Ohio. The Jackets will take on the No. 9 Wooster Fighting Scots at 8:00 pm on Friday, before challenging Ohio Wesleyan at 6:00 pm on Saturday.
The loaded early-season schedule will then be highlighted by the 2011-2012 home opener, with the Jackets welcoming Ohio Northern on November 22 for a 7:30 pm tip inside the Karl H. Weaner Community Center.