LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - In exclusive voting by the league’s head coaches, where three different teams received first-place votes, University of St. Thomas emerged as the favorite for the 2021 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference men’s basketball season. Complete .PDF
St. Thomas, which made its SCAC debut last year by winning the 2019-20 regular season crown, garnered five first-place votes to top the poll with 59 points. Texas Lutheran, which advanced to the SCAC Tournament Championship a season ago and has won four league tournament titles since its first back in the 2014-15 year, collected three first-place votes and finished one point behind the Celts in second with 58 points. Centenary, last year’s SCAC Tournament Champions, received the final first-place vote to round out the top three with 49 total points in the preseason polling. Dallas and Trinity tied for fourth with 35 points, followed closely by Schreiner in sixth with 34 total points. Southwestern checked in at seventh with 22 points follow by Austin College (21) and Colorado College (11).
St. Thomas returns two all-conference performers off its 2019-20 title team that finished the regular season with an overall mark of 24-2 and tied for the most wins in SCAC play in conference history with a 16-2 league mark. The 16 wins tied the 1999-00 Trinity Tigers and the 2001-02 DePauw Tigers, and the team’s .923 overall winning percentage set a new league high for a single season. Junior guard Cameron Gims headlines the Celts returnees after being named SCAC Defensive Player-of-the-Year and earning Third Team All-Conference honors a season ago. Defensively, Gims led the SCAC in both steals (61) and blocks (40) and helped pace a Celts defense that led the league in scoring defense (71.1 PPG) and held opponents to a conference-best 38.8 percent from the field. On the offensive end of the floor, Gims averaged 10.4 points per game on 46.9 percent shooting and led St. Thomas with 60 made threes. The Celts set an SCAC record with 310 made threes as a team last year. Gims also grabbed 5.7 rebounds and dished out 1.3 assists per game as a sophomore. Joining Gims as a returning all-conference performer is classmate Freddie Ricks III who was also named to the SCAC’s Third Team. Ricks led St. Thomas averaging 12.9 points per game on 46.5 percent shooting while grabbing 3.1 rebounds and distributing 2.3 assists per contest last year. Ricks helped the Celts to an SCAC best 88.8 points per game and an impressive +17.1 scoring margin, the second-best marks in conference history, respectively, for those statistical categories.
St. Thomas head coach Anthony Medina returns to the bench for his sixth season at the helm of the Celts program. Through his first five seasons, Medina has compiled an 87-61 (.588) record.
The 2021 season begins on Friday, January 15th, with teams scheduled to play a 12-game conference-only schedule. The top eight teams, based on regular season results, will qualify for the 2021 SCAC Tournament, which is scheduled for March 4-6 in Georgetown, Texas and hosted by Southwestern University.
2021 SCAC Men's Basketball Preseason Coaches' Poll
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| 1. | University of St. Thomas (5) | 59 |
| 2. | Texas Lutheran University (3) | 58 |
| 3. | Centenary College | 49 |
| 4. | University of Dallas | 35 |
| Trinity University | 35 | |
| 6. | Schreiner University | 34 |
| 7. | Southwestern University | 22 |
| 8. | Austin College | 21 |
| 9. | Colorado College | 11 |
