Pigram, Tiggs receive postseason awards

Junior guard Courtney Pigram (Memphis) earned his second straight first-team All Atlantic Sun Conference honor and junior forward Kevin Tiggs (Flint, Mich.) was a second team pick, as the conference announced its postseason awards Tuesday on the eve of the conference tournament’s first day of action on Wednesday.
Pigram, the 2007 A-Sun Player of the Year, led the Buccaneers in scoring with 15.9 points per game and in assists, with 3.5 per game.
Meanwhile, Tiggs validated the hype surrounding him as the 2007 NJCAA Coaches Association Division II National Player of the Year, scoring 15.2 points per game and grabbing 5.5 boards per game. He also won a pair of Player of the Week awards.
As for the rest of the league, Gardner-Webb swept the two top honors, with forward Thomas Sanders winning the Player of the Year and Nate Blank earning the Freshman of the Year award.
Sanders, a senior from Sugarland, Texas had a breakout year in his final season increasing his scoring from 11.0 per game last year to 17.9 this year, third in the A-Sun.
His rebounding production also skyrocketed, as he grabbed 11.2 rebounds per game, up from 7.0 last season, to rank fifth in the NCAA. He owns 20 double-doubles, tying him for third in the NCAA.
Gardner-Webb’s A-Sun freshman of the year Nate Blank immediately made an impact for the Runnin’ Bulldogs, averaging 11.0 points per game while connecting on 50 percent of his shots at the Lexington Regional of the 2K Sports College Hoops Classic.
In conference play he averaged 11.0 points per game and connected on 45.0 percent of his 3-point attempts.
Campbell’s Jonathan Rodriguez, Belmont’s Justin Hare, Pigram and Jacksonville’s Ben Smith and Pigram joined Sanders on the First Team All-Atlantic Sun squad.
Lipscomb’s Eddie Ard leads the Second-Team joined by four underclassmen, Belmont’s Shane Dansby, Stetson’s Garfield Blair and Mercer’s James Florence, and Tiggs.
Blank earned a unanimous spot on the All-Freshman team.
A pair of teammates from Lipscomb, Josh Slater and Adnan Hodzic, plus Jacksonville’s Ayron Hardy and Belmont’s Jordan Campbell make up the rest of the team.
Slater and Hodzic turned up their contributions in A-Sun play. Slater averaged 11.1 points per game in conference play after scoring just 4.8 per game in the non-conference season.
Hodzic increased his output from 5.2 to 12.2 points per game and enters the A-Sun Championship on the heels of averaging 22.5 points per game last weekend in wins against Gardner-Webb and Campbell.
Hardy became the fourth Dolphin named to the All-Freshman team in head coach Cliff Warren’s three seasons at the helm. Hardy shot 54.7 percent in A-Sun games.
Campbell joins Hare, Andy Wicke and Will Peeples as current Bruins to have earned All-Freshman status. He shot 49.0 percent from the floor and grabbed 5.3 rebounds per game, second among freshmen.
After back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances, Belmont head coach Rick Byrd captured his first Atlantic Sun Coach of the Year honor.
His Bruins registered road wins at Cincinnati and at Alabama, to become the first A-Sun team to win two regular-season games against “BCS” schools in a single season since Samford defeated St. John’s and Alabama in 1999-2000.
The Bruins enter the 2008 NCAA tournament riding a 13-game winning streak, after winning three straight A-Sun tournament titles, a first in the Atlantic Sun’s history.
Mercer’s Calvin Henry captured the Defensive Player of the Year award on the heels of leading the conference in blocked shots and finishing third in defensive rebounding. He posted two games of five blocked shots and recorded at least one block in 27 of 28 games this season.

2007-08 All Atlantic Sun Conference Teams

Coach of the Year
Rick Byrd, BEL