Tuesday, October 25, 2011

XU Gold Rush in preseason top 25 for 2nd straight season

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Xavier University of Louisiana is No. 21 in the NAIA Division I Men's Basketball Coaches' Top 25 announced Monday. It's the first time in coach Dannton Jackson's nine seasons that the Gold Rush are preseason top-25 in consecutive years.

Xavier, 27-6 and the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference Tournament runner-up this past season, returns nine lettermen and four starters. The Rush will attempt to qualify for the Buffalo Funds-NAIA Division I National Championship for the sixth time in eight seasons. This past season the XU men won their first 13 games and qualified for nationals with their most victories since the 1983-84 season.

Xavier was 20th in the 2010-11 preseason and spent three weeks in the top 10.

The other GCAC team to receive votes was defending tournament champion Tougaloo, which is 13th. Xavier will visit Tougaloo on Jan. 23 and play host to the Bulldogs on Feb. 13. Two teams which received votes, Mobile and William Carey, will play Xavier in home-and-away non-conference series this season.

Defending champion Pikeville is the preseason No. 1 after receiving five of 12 first-place votes. Four other teams received first-place votes.

Earlier in the day Xavier's women's team earned a preseason No. 16 ranking. That makes Xavier one of four NAIA Division I schools — the others are Azusa Pacific, Evangel and Union (Tenn.) — with men's and women's basketball teams to earn preseason top-25 rankings in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

The Gold Rush will open the season at 7 p.m. Nov. 2 at The Barn against Carver College of Atlanta.

The first regular-season poll will be announced Dec. 5.


  
NAIA Division I Men's Basketball Coaches' Top 25(first-place votes in parentheses — includes 2010-11 final records)
RankTeamRecordPointsLast
1Pikeville (5)30-730024
2Mountain State (3)33-42953
3Robert Morris (Chicago) (2)32-22931
4Concordia (Calif.) (1)32-42882
5Martin Methodist (1)34-32686
6LSU-Shreveport30-42554
7Oklahoma Baptist24-92549
8Georgetown (Ky.)32-52407
9Azusa Pacific29-62338
10Texas Wesleyan30-42236
11Rogers State22-1220225
12Shorter23-8188RV
13Tougaloo27-418511
14Columbia (Mo.)26-616618
15-tieBiola28-615813
15-tieMontana State Northern24-915819
17St. Catharine22-914914
18Southern Nazarene26-814110
19Evangel26-913215
20Southern Poly23-10121RV
21Xavier27-69417
22Union (Tenn.)26-78812
23Carroll (Mont.)23-97522
24Saint Xavier19-1366NR
25Fresno Pacific20-1163RV

Others receiving votes: Park 55, Lee (Tenn.) 45, MidAmerica Nazarene 33, Mobile 31, Oklahoma Christian 26, Campbellsville 24, Our Lady of the Lake 22, Freed-Hardeman 21, Life 16, MontanaWestern 12, Westminster (Utah) 3, William Carey 1, Northwestern Oklahoma 1, St. Francis (Ill.) 1, Benedictine (Kan.) 1, Westmont 1, Emmanuel (Ga.) 1, Cumberland 1, Cumberlands 1.

By Ed Cassiere, Sports Information Director
VISIT: XAVIER UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA
VISIT: XULAATHLETICS

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