The Rollins College Tars will open the 2018-19 basketball season Friday afternoon at 1 PM when they take on the Benedict College Tigers at the Clemente Center in Melbourne in the South Region tip-off challenge. Auburn- Montgomery and Florida Tech will play in the other contest. As always you can catch all the action on the Tars Sports Network at RollinsSports.com and on 91.5 FM WPRK Winter Park.
The Tars are coming off a 16-14 campaign and 11-9 in the SSC a year ago. They were bounced in the SSC Semifinals after knocking off Nova Southeastern in the quarterfinals. Tom Klusman begins his 39th season on the bench as the Rollins head coach and is seven wins shy of 700 in his illustrious career. He will return assistant coach Kyle Frakes- the newest assistant on the Tars bench will be former Rollins standout Kevin Hogan who returns to his alma mater after being an assistant coach at Austin Peay. He also made Division I coaching stops at Florida A and M- as well as William and Mary. Hogan spent time at Tallahassee Community College as well.
Jakobi Bonner- Parker Davis- and- Eric Castaneda are amongst the returnees from last year's squad. Castaneda is the top returning scorer at 11.7 points per game. Connor McKim will run the point again, and averaged 11.3 points along with 3.6 assists per contest. The Tars did lose two of the best players in program history to graduation last season in Sam Philpott and Jeff Merton. Four freshman have been added to the mix in Hutton Yenor- Will Erickson- Cade Long- and- Matej Susec. Rollins has added ChuChu Enechyonia (VMI) and Trevor Recio (Queens Charlotte) to the mix as well. The Tars averaged 82.8 points a game last season- while they shot 38 percent from the 3-point line.
Benedict went 21-10 a season ago and 11-8 in the SIAC. The Tigers fell 74-72 to Clark- Atlanta in the SIAC Championship Game, falling just short of an NCAA tournament bid. A very youthful Benedict team only has two seniors in Davante Wiltshire and Aaron Bryant. The Tigers are coached by Artis Maddox who is in his first season with the Tigers after being the head coach of Florida Memorial the past three seasons. The Tigers did play one exhibition game against the College of Charleston and were a 95-43 loser. The Tigers were down 41-28 at the half befpre being out-scored 54-15 in the closing 20 minutes. Ricky Peterson scored 10 points to lead the Tigers- while- Tyrease Mapp chipped in nine. Peterson and Mapp each tallied six rebounds.
Point guard Davante Wiltshire played in 28 of the Tiger's 31 games last season and averaged 14.4 minutes per night. He averaged 3.3 points and 1.8 assists per contest. DeShawn Graham averaged 3.1 points per game and shot 50 percent from the 3-point line- while Peterson played in 16 contests last season.
The line presented by JuanBernalSportsBooks.com: Benedict by 4
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