Men’s basketball preseason review
High Point University basketball fans expect John Brown to be a strong leader on the court this season. Photo by: HighPointUniversity.edu
By Collin Giuliani // Staff Writer
After finishing 23-10 last season, including splitting the Big South regular season title with Charleston Southern and advancing to the second round of the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament, the High Point Panthers enter the 2015-16 season as the preseason favorites to win the Big South Conference. In the annual Big South preseason poll, High Point finished with 17 out of a possible 31 first place votes, and finished with 320 points. Coastal Carolina, who won the Big South Tournament last season and earned the conference’s automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament, came in second place with 10 first place votes and 301 total points.
While the team has been graded highly by members of the conference, two players on the Panthers earned Preseason All-Conference honors. John Brown, the redshirt senior forward from Jacksonville, Florida, made it onto First Team Big South. The honor is well deserved for Brown as he averaged 19.3 points per game last season and was named the 2014 Big South Player of the Year. This is the third consecutive year that John Brown has been named the conference’s Preseason Player of the Year. According to the conference’s media day release, this makes Brown the first player in the history of the conference to be named Big South Preseason Player of the Year for three years in a row. Rounding out the first team are Elijah Wilson of Coastal Carolina, DeSean Murray of Presbyterian College, Tyrell Nelson of Gardner-Webb and Keon Johnson of Winthrop.
Additionally, senior guard Adam Weary made it onto the Big South Preseason Second Team. Weary averaged 9.3 points per game last season, and led the Panthers with an impressive 85 assists. In 2013, Adam Weary was on the Big South All-Freshman team. He has averaged 10.3 points throughout his three years at High Point.
The Panthers are led by head coach Scott Cherry, who has led the Panthers to three consecutive regular season Big South titles. He will be entering his seventh season with the program. Their season opens up on Nov. 13 against Texas Tech, with their first home game occurring on Nov. 15 against North Carolina Wesleyan. Conference play for the Panthers begins on Dec. 31 against Radford. High Point is looking to make it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history this season.