ROCK HILL, S.C. -- Lincoln Memorial University's Luquon Choice and Chris Perry have been named to the All-South Atlantic Conference first team, it was announced by the league office on Thursday, March 2.
In addition to that, Dorian Pinson was tabbed with All-SAC second team laurels, Cornelius Taylor landed on the All-Freshman team and Josh Schertz was picked as the SAC Coach of the Year for the fourth straight season and the fifth time overall.
Choice - a 6-3 redshirt-senior guard - earns the third All-SAC first team plaudit of his tenure with the Railsplitters. Choice has now been honored by the league for every season of his career, as he was also an All-Freshman team selection in 2013-14. The Laurens, S.C. native is averaging 18.8 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game this season, shooting 49.4 percent from the field and a sizzling 48.5 percent from three, and regularly defends the opposing team's best player. Perry - a 6-8, 250-pound transfer from the University of South Florida - has established himself as one of the most dominant forces in NCAA Division II basketball in his one and only season with the Railsplitters. The Bartow, Fla. native has accounted for 18.8 points, 8.2 rebounds and 1.3 blocks per game while shooting a ridiculous 68.4 percent from the field and converting 71.5 percent of his free-throw attempts. Pinson, who has been sidelined for nine of the last 10 games with an injury, earns the second All-SAC plaudit of his career after averaging 12.5 points, 8.1 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game over the course of 20 appearances. He shot 52.3 percent from the field and added 1.5 steals per game. The Greenville, S.C. native shot 73.2 percent from the free-throw line, which is the 16th-best mark in the conference. Taylor - a 6-0 guard from Claxton, Ga. - has been stellar in his debut season with the Railsplitters, averaging 10.9 points, 2.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game while shooting 39.3 percent from three-point range. Taylor finished second in the SAC Freshman of the Year voting behind Newberry's Marshall Lange while recording 79 assists and 21 steals and knocking down 48 three-pointers. Schertz - the 2015-16 National Coach of the Year - was voted as the SAC Coach of the Year for the fourth straight year and for the fifth time in his nine-season tenure with the Railsplitters. Despite battling a plethora of injuries and breaking in a slew of new players, Schertz led Lincoln Memorial to its fifth straight SAC regular-season title and its seventh consecutive 25-win season. The Railsplitters are on the cusp of making their seventh straight trip to the NCAA Tournament and hosting the NCAA Division II Southeast Regional for the third season in a row. Schertz is the SAC's all-time leader in winning percentage with a career 143-30 league record (82.6 percent) and is fifth in both overall wins and SAC victories. Nobody else on that list has coached fewer than 18 seasons. He is a combined 229-51 (81.7 percent) in his nine seasons at Lincoln Memorial with an 82-6 SAC record over the past four years. The Railsplitters had produced just four 25-win seasons in the 100 or so years of existence prior to Schertz's arrival. The Railsplitters won their 15th straight game and advanced to the SAC Championship semifinals for the seventh year in a row on Wednesday with an 88-71 win over Tusculum. Lincoln Memorial will face Carson-Newman at 5:30 on Saturday at Timmons Arena in Greenville, S.C., with the winner advancing to Sunday's SAC Championship title game to play either Queens or Wingate.
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On the heels of the program's first South Atlantic Conference regular season championship, the LMU women's basketball team is well represented in the postseason All-SAC honors list, which was released Thursday, March 2. Megan Pittman headlines the honors, earning SAC Player of the Year and All-SAC first team honors. Shea Coker was named to the All-SAC second team while Josey Harding was named to the All-SAC Honorable Mention team. Sydney Duggins was named to the All-Freshman team while head coach Krystal Evans earned Coach of the Year honors. Pittman makes an appearance on the All-SAC First Team for the second straight year and becomes the first LMU women's basketball player to be named SAC Player of the Year. The senior had a stellar season, averaging nearly a double-double with 15.6 points and 9.8 rebounds a game. Evans becomes the first LMU women's coach to be named SAC Coach of the Year and is the first LMU women's coach to earn Coach of the Year honors since Roger Vannoy in the late 1980s. In her three seasons at LMU she has not only continued the rebuilding process started by her predecessor, Roger Hodge, but has taken the program to a whole new level.Last season she guided the team to their first-ever SAC Tournament semifinals appearance and their best record since the 2003-04 season with their 17-12 record. This season the team took another step, starting the season 20-0, having the best start in SAC play by any school in conference history with their 15-0 start, earning the program's best-ever conference finish in the NCAA era at 19-3, having the first 20-win season by an LMU team since 2003-04, winning the program's first SAC regular season championship and having the team on the verge of their second-ever appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Coker makes her second appearance on an All-SAC team, having earned a spot on the All-Freshman team her freshman season. The junior stepped up her game in a big way this year, more than doubling her output in field goals, three-pointers and points. She currently averages 13.2 points a game and finished the regular season ranked second in the SAC in three-point percentage, hitting 47.4 percent. That percentage is also the second best in a single season in school history. Harding earns her first All-SAC honor with her appearance on the Honorable Mention team. The senior led the SAC in rebounding for nearly the entire season, finishing the regular season averaging 10.9 rebounds a game. She also ranks in the top 20 nationally in rebounds and rebounds per game. Duggins had a solid freshman campaign and earns the first all-conference honor of her career. She reached double-digits in scoring in seven games and had the second-best season scoring-wise by a freshman (second only to Shea Coker) since the 2012 season. She averaged 5.7 points and 2.4 rebounds a game for the season. LMU, the regular season SAC Champions, are the top seed in this season's SAC Tournament. They defeated Queens in the quarterfinals Wednesday night 84-57 and will face local rival Carson-Newman in the semifinals Saturday at high noon in Greenville, S.C.
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