SIU kicks off the Scott Nagy era and the entire D1 College Basketball season on Monday at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota against Charleston.
This game will be broadcast over on the Field of 68's YouTube and Twitter feeds for free.
Meet the Cougars:
Like SIU, Charleston went through a coaching change and roster turnover with Pat Kelsey taking the job at Louisville. In comes Chris Mack who spent his first 9 years as head coach at Xavier and 4 years at Louisville. At Xavier, Mack made the NCAA Tournament 8 times in 9 seasons. Mack hit the Sweet 16 4 times and led Xavier to the Elite Eight in 2017. At Louisville, Mack made the NCAA Tournament in his first season there but struggled in the 2 years post the shortened 2019-20 season and was fired after a 6-8 start.
Charleston was picked 2nd in the CAA Preseason Poll behind Towson and received 3 first place votes.
With the coaching change, Charleston went through a pretty big roster flip but were able to keep 6-10 Senior Ante Brzovic. Brzovic is from Zagreb, Croatia; and started his collegiate career at DII Southeastern Oklahoma State where he led the team in scoring as a Freshman. As a Sophomore at Charleston, Brzovic averaged 11.6 points per game and was named to the All-CAA Third Team. Brzovic is a pretty skilled passer out of the post, he averaged 2.4 assists per game last season. Brzovic was picked as the CAA Preseason Player of the Year coming into this season.
Another returnee for the Cougars is 6-3 Senior CJ Fulton. Fulton spent his first 2 collegiate seasons at Lafayette before transferring to Charleston before last season. Fulton started 25 games last year and averaged 4.1 points per game and 4.1 assists per game. He was named to the All-CAA Preseason Second Team coming into this season.
One of the big transfer additions to this Charleston team is 6-3 Graduate Student Derrin Boyd. Boyd spent 2 seasons at NAIA Georgetown College after a redshirt Freshman season and transferred to Lipscomb for his Junior season. Last year at Lipscomb, Boyd led the team in scoring with 17.6 points per game and was named to the All-ASUN Second Team. The other big transfer is 6-5 Junior AJ Smith, who comes over after 2 years at The Citadel where he increased his scoring average from 6.1 PPG to 16.2 PPG.
Links:
SIU Game Notes
Charleston Game Notes
