DC Men Poised for Rebound Season on the Hardwood

DEFIANCE, Ohio - One year after finishing in unfamiliar territory in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference standings and failing to qualify for the HCAC Tournament, which it won the previous season, the Defiance College men's basketball program will enter the 2011-2012 campaign poised to erase the haunting memories of seven losses by five points or fewer and fully armed to make the climb back to the top of the league standings.

Even with the disappointments and tough defeats offered to the Yellow Jackets during the 2010-2011 season, DC still ended the year with a 13-12 overall mark for its fifth-straight season with a winning record. The 13 victories also gave the Purple and Gold 90 wins over the past five seasons for an average total of 18 triumphs per season during that span.

Experiencing that level of success and contending for HCAC championships on an annual basis is what fourth-year head coach, Kyle Brumett, now expects from his program each and every year, and that should be the situation that DC finds itself in once again during the 2011-2012 campaign.

The Yellow Jackets are returning all five starters and nine lettermen from one year ago. That group accounted for 92.4 percent of the team's scoring and roughly 85 percent of DC's rebounds and minutes played last season. The strong returning core will be motivated to get back to prominence in the HCAC and will be further fueled by the numerous impact additions scattered throughout a 14-man incoming class.

Entering the new season free of lofty expectations from outside sources should free DC's 23-man roster of the pressures it faced one year ago and allow the team to pay more attention to the details, while looking to improve as the season moves along with the hopes of earning that outside respect at the end of the season.

A major factor in DC's turnaround will most certainly come from an intentional effort by the coaching staff to bolster the team's depth and address weaknesses on the defensive end of the court. Early indications point to the Jackets being successful on both of those fronts. The result should be a Purple and Gold unit that can go 14 deep during any game of the season and get back to the up-tempo attack on the both ends of the court that defined DC's NCAA Tournament squad two years ago.

Along with getting back to that fast-pace style, this year's unit will share another strong similarity to the 2009-2010 team with a large senior class anchoring the roster. The group of Anthony Brown, Brandon Hoke, Justin Morris and Kevin and Kyle Tietje will be leaned on for leadership on and off the court throughout the season.

That group enters its final season on campus with a resume including 54 wins in three seasons, a .620 clip in HCAC play, one HCAC Championship and one NCAA Tournament bid. If DC can reach its goals in 2011-2012, this five-man senior class will join the 2010 class as one of the most successful in Defiance's Division III era.

POINT GUARD
Defiance has cornered the market on the top point guards in the HCAC in recent memory, as the Jackets have seen Mike Floyd or Logan Wolfrum lead the conference in assists in each of the past four seasons. A new name could join that list of league-leading playmakers, as incoming freshman Mason Roth is poised to take the reins of the up-tempo DC offense in 2011-2012. Roth's arrival and the degree of his success with the Jackets could pay major dividends for the squad, relieving some of the pressure from Logan Wolfrum and making the league's leading scorer from one year ago an even more dangerous threat. Roth averaged 4.5 assists per game as a senior at McComb High and will be joined on the depth chart by rising sophomore Leroy Lewis and the aforementioned Wolfrum. Lewis ended his first season on the planks at Defiance with 47 assists and saw the Jackets win nine-of-15 games in which he dished out at least two helpers. Wolfrum will likely still see plenty of time at the helm of the Yellow Jacket attack, after piling up an HCAC-leading 133 assists as a sophomore and ranking 33rd in the nation in that category.

SHOOTING GUARD / WING
The Purple and Gold will boast plenty of depth on the wings, with seniors Anthony Brown and Brandon Hoke joining junior Logan Wolfrum and incoming freshmen Anthony Barnum, Drew Frizell and Travis Schomaeker. That top six on the depth chart provides Defiance with an array of weapons and strengths to choose from. The proven firepower of Brown and Wolfrum, each of whom were tabbed as All-HCAC performers one year ago, gives the Jackets the top scoring tandem in the league with over 36.4 points per game last season. Brown shot 36.6 percent from long distance and ranked fourth in the HCAC with 14.8 points per outing, while Wolfrum connected on 36.4 percent of his attempts from beyond the arc and ended with a conference-leading 21.6 points per showing. Wolfrum went on to earn Third-Team All-Midwest Region honors, after topping all NCAA Division III freshmen and sophomores in scoring and ranking 18th overall in the nation. Wolfrum reached double figures in scoring in 24-of-25 games and poured in at least 20 points in 12 contests, en route to becoming the first player in Defiance College's NCAA Division III era to reach 500 points, 100 assists and 100 rebounds in a single season. All-Ohio prep standouts, Frizell and Schomaeker, will give DC two more sharp-shooting guards to attack defenses with, as Frizell scored 21.3 points per game as a senior at Smithville and Schomaeker netted 16.0 points per game in his final campaign at Ottawa-Glandorf. When the Jackets need to give the lineup a defensive boost, Hoke and Barnum will be called upon to turn up the pressure on opposing offenses. Hoke will be used as an on-ball defender, with Barnum's 6-6 frame allowing him to be deployed anywhere on the court for Defiance as its primary stopper on the defensive end.

POST
A trio of seniors will set the tone for Defiance in the paint, with brothers Kevin and Kyle Tietje teaming with Justin Morris to lead the Jackets' efforts on the post. The Tietje twins and Morris accounted for 15.9 points and 13.2 rebounds per game last season and will be leaned on for even more production during their fourth and final seasons with the program. Kevin was especially pivotal to the success of DC one year ago, ranking fourth in the HCAC with 6.8 boards per night and averaging 8.8 points and 7.6 rebounds per game in 13 Yellow Jacket victories. The veterans will be pushed by a young crop of athletic forwards in the form of rising sophomores, Ryan Hicks and Brandon Ray, as well as the highly touted rookie, Jeff Hugan. Hicks wasted little time making his presence felt in his first season with the program, netting 9.1 points per game over his first 10 collegiate ballgames. The Port Clinton, Ohio, native went on to start 17-of-25 games for Defiance and ranked among the squad's best all-around players with 8.3 points, 5.4 rebounds, 0.9 blocks and 0.9 steals per showing. Ray also worked his way into the mix later in his freshman season, getting the start in each of DC's final two games and pulling down seven boards in 24 minutes of action. Hugan starred at prep power Ann Arbor Huron and boasts the potential to garner valuable minutes as he adjusts to the collegiate game.

SCHEDULE
Anyone familiar with the Defiance College men's basketball program will not be surprised to see yet another stacked schedule facing the Yellow Jackets in 2011-2012. DC will face top teams from the North Coast Athletic Conference, the Ohio Athletic Conference and the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association, all before getting into the meat of the grueling 18-game gauntlet offered by the highly competitive HCAC. The Jackets will open at Kalamazoo on November 15, before heading east to Wooster to take on the preseason No. 9 Scots and Ohio Wesleyan in the NCAC/HCAC Classic on November 18 and 19. A daunting home opener against Ohio Northern then awaits the Jackets on November 22, before opening league play at home against Anderson on November 30. Other key dates will include the 37th-Annual Purple and Gold Tournament on December 29 and 30, as well as the 188th installment of DC's rivalry with Bluffton on February 15 inside the Karl. H. Weaner Community Center. The Yellow Jackets will look to improve over the course of their challenging 25-game slate, with the hopes of reaching the end with the 27th conference championship in program history and their second trip to the NCAA Tournament in the past three seasons.

Defiance will get things started on Tuesday, November 15 at Kalamazoo beginning at 7:00 pm. The 2011-2012 home opener will be one week later on November 22, as the Jackets welcome Ohio Northern to the Karl H. Weaner Community Center for a 7:30 pm tip.