Mount St. Mary’s Basketball Season Preview

As we move away from the Baltimore metro area, The Baltimore Wire’s tour around the local college basketball landscape moves to the northern Frederick County town of Emmitsburg and Mount St. Mary’s University.

Last season was a pleasant surprise for the Mountaineers. They were surprise champions of the Northeast Conference Tournament and earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in the second year of coach Jamion Christian’s term. They ended up losing in their First Four game in Dayton to Albany. Their final record was 16–17.

The Mountaineers have been picked to finish in fifth place by the annual Northeast Conference Preseason Coaches Poll.

Coach Christian calls his team’s style of play “Mayhem.” They use an intense pressing defense and put up plenty of three-point shots. The team looks to have multiple players with around 10 points per game average. Kristijan Krajina, Byron Ashe, Gregory Graves and Taylor Danaher should all get plenty of action.

The Mountaineers opens the season at Arizona on Friday, November 14 and that game will be shown on the Pac-12 Network. Home games start with a game against Maryland-Eastern Shore on November 19th.

Away games at Wake Forest on November 26 and Seton Hall on December 2 will be very difficult situations for the Mountaineers, as will the December 9 game at Notre Dame and the December 29 game at Old Dominion.

Besides the Arizona game, “The Mount” will see television exposure on ESPN3 (Wake Forest and Notre Dame), MASN (Loyola University Maryland), Comcast SportsNet (American), Fox Sports 2 (Seton Hall) and the American Sports Network (Old Dominion).

My prediction for Mount St. Mary’s Basketball: 17-12 before the Northeast Conference Tournament