Men's Basketball Set to Begin Season Saturday at Jacksonville

Saturday, November 28

Jacksonville, FL

1 p.m. CT

Southern Miss

Jacksonville

Men's Basketball Set to Begin Season Saturday at Jacksonville

11/27/2020 1:08:00 PM | Men's Basketball

Game Notes

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The Southern Miss men's basketball program is ready to go in its long-awaited season opener. The Golden Eagles will battle the Jacksonville Dolphins, Saturday at 1 p.m. CT.

The game will be carried on ESPN Plus, as well as the Southern Miss Learfield IMG Sports Network (Rock 104.5 in Hattiesburg/Laurel), with John Cox on the call. JU opened its season Wednesday with a 99-57 win over Coastal Georgia.

NOTABLE
–    Southern Miss enters its second year under the leadership of Hattiesburg native and former Golden Eagle Jay Ladner. The Black and Gold return six letterwinners, have nine newcomers and two additional players who redshirted last season. Ladner came from Southeastern Louisiana, where he also won nine games his first year before improving each season to 22 by the fourth.

–    LaDavius Draine enters the year with 921 points and seeking to become the program's 38th member of the 1,000-point club. The most-recent addition was Cortez Edwards, who reached the milestone in November 2018 at Troy. Draine also has 178 three-pointers to his name, which is 16 away from Casey Fisher (1984-88). Bernard Haslett holds the record (316 from 1990-94).

–    Tyler Stevenson continues to be one of the most exciting, yet underrated, stories in Conference USA. The former walk-on has gained 50 pounds since arriving on campus and last year had the fourth-best scoring improvement among sophomores in the nation (plus-9.5 ppg). He ranked sixth (7.7 rpg) and eighth (56.6 percent) in rebounding and shooting, respectively, within league play.

–    Another returning starter is Artur Konontsuk, who joined the starting rotation full-time on Jan. 23 after the loss of two guards. Each of his four double-digit scoring games coincided with the team's last four wins of the year.

–    One of the more significant parts of the season occurred following the Jan. 18 win over Rice. Jay Malone, after exploding for a career-high 27 points in the 81-68 victory, was declared academically ineligible along with David McCoy. Coupled with a season-ending injury to Angel Smith and another player transferring in December, the Golden Eagles ran with a seven-man rotation the rest of the season. This year's reloading allows for much more rest and freshness.

–   The starting lineup could feature three newcomers: Tae Hardy, Justin Johnson and DeAndre Pinckney. Hardy was the first commit of the class and led Pearl River CC to the nation's only undefeated record. Johnson and Pinckney became friends through the high school ranks and were rated in the top-16 for national junior-college recruiting. Jaron Pierre, Jr. is another player expected to see significant minutes, and the New Orleans native was ranked as the No. 4 recruit in Louisiana.

–   Assists were Southern Miss' best category within C-USA play, averaging 13.8 per game. While the team's top two leaders there are now gone (Gabe Watson, 106 and Leonard Harper-Baker, 100), Malone returns after having 79 despite not playing the final 12 games. Hardy's explosiveness as a player and leader will also factor into the team's offense.

–   The Golden Eagles' 71.9-percent clip from the foul line last year ranked sixth in school history. Included in that was Draine making 23-straight to start C-USA play, the fifth-longest streak by in program history, and Stevenson improving by 20.8 percent. Stevenson also came up big with

–   This is Southern MIss' second-straight year traveling to Duval County. The squad had a home-and-home series with fellow Atlantic Sun member North Florida. This meeting with the Dolphins' marks the teams' first since a 62-61 Southern Miss win in December 2002 at a University of Iowa tournament.

–   While any team can anticipate schedule changes, Southern Miss was able to get this contest signed and delivered Tuesday. Before the NCAA-mandated November 25 start date, the Golden Eagles had TCU, Loyola New Orleans, UL Lafayette and Lamar on the ledger, but the last of those was able to be pushed to Dec. 15. Saturday's game against the Dolphins came about after the MKE Classic was called off last Saturday (Ball State, UWM and North Dakota State were original participants).