ETSU men’s basketball junior Tommy Hubbard was named to the second team all-conference as the Atlantic Sun released its postseason awards on Tuesday afternoon.Hubbard finished 10th in the A-Sun, scoring an average of 13.8 points a game, while posting the third best rebounding average in the conference with 8.4 a contest. A double-double machine, he totaled 13 double-double efforts on the season, and had a career-high 32 points in the win over Arkansas on Nov. 27, 2009.
Hubbard has also finished seventh in the conference in steals with a 1.58 average and ninth in free-throw percentage shooting .733 from the charity line.
Player of the Year Adnan Hodzic of Lipscomb leads a group of five that also includes Campbell’s Jonathan Rodriguez, Jacksonville’s Ben Smith and Mercer’s duo of James Florence and Daniel Emerson as repeat All-Conference performers. Hodzic and Smith return as First-Team performers while Rodriguez and Emerson earned First-Team honors after landing on the Second Team a season ago.
Florence and Rodriguez became only the fourth and fifth players in league history, the first since College of Charleston’s Thaddeous Delaney, to earn All-Conference honors four straight years.
Hodzic finished the regular season atop the conference in scoring at 22.5 points per game. His average ranks as the highest in the league since Mercer’s Reggie Elliott averaged 22.6 points during the 1995-96 season.
The Sarajevo, Bosnia native topped double digits in scoring in every game and enters the General Shale Brick Atlantic Sun Men’s Basketball Championship having topped double digits in 56 straight games, the longest active streak in the nation.
Smith became the Dolphins’ career leader in steals and enters the A-Sun Championship needing seven assists to set another record while Rodriguez established school records for scoring and rebounding. The senior forward became just the conference’s second 2,000-point, 1,000-rebound performer and set league records for free throws made and attempted.
Rodriguez’s teammate Junard Hartley earned the nod as the league’s Defensive Player of the Year. In addition to leading the conference in steals at 2.8 per game, the junior guard also led the league in assists at 6.1, becoming just the fourth player in A-Sun history to lead in both categories in a single year. Robbie Laing, who coached the Camels to their first regular-season title in the school’s Division I history and their most wins since posting 20 wins in 1993-94 overwhelmingly won his first A-Sun Coach of the Year honor.
Josh Slater, Hodzic’s fellow junior at Lipscomb, headlines first-time All-Atlantic Sun honorees. Slater grabbed a spot on the First Team after he joined 2009 Player of the Year Alex Renfroe, of Belmont, as the only two players in the league in the last 10 years to average 15 points, five rebounds and five assists.
Lehmon Colbert, a consistent double-digit scorer since arriving in Jacksonville four seasons, made his first All-Conference team, placing on the Second Team.
At ETSU, Tommy Hubbard had to pick up his production following the graduation of Kevin Tiggs and Courtney Pigram and the injuries to preseason All-Conference choice Mike Smith. Hubbard posted the highest scoring increase in the conference as he averaged 13.8 points per game, a season after averaging 4.0. The junior’s 13 double-doubles rank second to Emerson.
Two freshmen, Belmont’s Ian Clark and Kennesaw State’s Markeith Cummings, round out the All-Atlantic Sun choices as both first-year stars landed on the Second Team.
Cummings enters the A-Sun Championship with the third-best scoring average for a freshman in the country while Clark ranks fourth among freshmen with 70 3-point field goals.
FGCU’s Anthony Banks, who like Clark and Cummings led his respective team in scoring, also garnered a unanimous spot on the All-Freshmen team. Stetson’s Ridge Graham and UNF’s Andy Diaz rounded out the squad.
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